


Low Town

by JJPOR



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Deadly Assassin 2: Electric Boogaloo, Fourth Doctor Era, Gallifrey Noir, Gen, Time Lords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:32:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJPOR/pseuds/JJPOR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A murder on Gallifrey is bad enough; the murder of a prominent Time Lord in the heart(s) of Prydon Academy is even worse. Fortunately, Castellan Spandrell is on the case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the dw_guestfest Whoniverse Minor Characters Ficathon on Livejournal. I used an unfilled prompt originally posted for the 2015 round of the ficathon by user john_amend_all: “Spandrell — Gallifreyan police procedural.” It…got a little out of hand. I’ve tried to incorporate various bits of canon and semi-canon from TV stories, novels etc relating to both the “Classic” and NuWho periods, as well as stuff from my own weird head-fanon. Doctor Who and its many characters and associated copyrights do not – repeat not – belong to me.

“I’m sorry, Castellan.”

Spandrell opened his eyes. 

He suppressed a groan of irritation at the sight of the slight, black-robed figure standing in the office doorway: “Co-ordinator Kelner. I thought I had asked that my meditation not be disturbed?”

Kelner bowed obsequiously, the same way he did everything in the presence of a superior. Spandrell had it on good authority that his behaviour was much less self-effacing when he was interacting only with subordinates. “There has been an… _incident_ , Castellan, requiring your personal attention.”

Spandrell decided to let the groan out anyway as he rose ponderously to his feet. “I see. Shobogans relieving themselves in the Panopticon again?” He picked up his gloves and donned them slowly, then eased his comm-ring onto his left hand.

Kelner maintained his façade of bland deference. “A somewhat more serious matter, Castellan.”

It was at moments like this that Spandrell wished Engin were still around. He supposed a seat on the Committee of Inquiry into the Resignation Day Incident was a step up from archive-keeping and administration for the Lord Castellan’s office, but the old Co-ordinator had been so perfectly suited to his duties here. He was sorely missed. Kelner was keen and efficient, but there was something faintly unpleasant about him. There had been no artifice about Engin. Kelner not only alternated between pomposity and servility depending on his audience, but also gave the impression of never saying what was really on his mind. He would, no doubt, go far.

Spandrell allowed the Co-ordinator to lead the way out of his private office and into the main Capitol security operations room. It was a shadowy, cavernous space, walls of shimmering green crystal arcing up and over to form a great vaulted ceiling. Beneath the elevated gantry where the Castellan and Co-ordinator’s own workstations were situated, Chancellery Guardsmen in red could be seen coming and going, while plain-robed technicians busied themselves at bright screens and twinkling consoles. The low buzz of half-heard communications drifted up to where Spandrell and Kelner stood:

_“Control to Sector Six. All Guards in Sector Six stand to immediately! Reports of a disturbance at intersection of Pandad III Concourse and…”_

_“…theft of a ceremonial staff. Suspect is a Shobogan male, physical age…”_

_“Sector Nineteen routine patrol report. Relative timeband is…”_

The typical bustle of another unexciting day guarding the Citadel from all threats internal and external, Spandrell thought. He did not mind unexciting days; on the contrary, he welcomed them. What was not unexciting was the large red icon flashing on the main situation map dominating the wall directly opposite the gantry.

“A Crimson Alert?” Spandrell suddenly felt a deep sense of foreboding.

Kelner inclined his skull-capped head again. “As I said, Castellan, a most serious incident.”

Spandrell glanced back at the map. “In Sector Eight-B? That’s the Prydon Academy Annexe. You called me out here for this?”

For a moment, Kelner visibly bristled at his superior’s peremptory tone, but only for a moment. “Castellan…”

“It’s not our jurisdiction,” Spandrell pointed out. “If the acolytes have been wassailing in the main hexangle, or whatever they get up to, it’s a matter for the Prydonian Proctors. The Lord Chancellor would have my hide if a member of the Guard dared set foot…”

“Well, Castellan, that’s just it. One of our men…”

“The Lord Chancellor’s men, Co-ordinator,” Spandrell corrected him. “We merely direct them on his behalf.”

“Yes, Castellan. One of our…that is, the Lord Chancellor’s men…behaved…precipitately in response to an incident.”

“Are you telling me a Guardsman has trespassed on Academy territory? Who is the fool? I’ll break him.”

“There were extenuating circumstances, Castellan,” said Kelner, and for the moment seemed content to leave it at that. He almost seemed reluctant to reveal more.

Spandrell found that there was no use in mincing words with the man: “Well, what happened?”

“A death, Castellan,” the Co-ordinator divulged eventually, as if discussing a particularly delicate and embarrassing medical condition. “The conditions at the scene are described as…suspicious.”

“Perhaps our unfortunate Guardsman deserves a reprieve in that case,” Spandrell admitted. It was perhaps the only extenuating circumstance he could think of that might justify such a breach of the protocols.

Kelner continued to squirm: “Worse than that, however…”

“Worse than a suspicious death at Prydon Academy?” Spandrell asked, incredulously.

“As I understand it, the Guardsman in question was passing the entrance to the Annexe on his routine patrol route when he was alerted to the discovery of the…the mortal remains. He acted to secure the scene while calling for immediate assistance, without giving due regard to the jurisdictional boundaries, which in turn led to a…I think I’m right in calling it a confrontation…with the Academy’s Proctors. The Guard Commander who responded to the incident report…”

“And who is that?” Spandrell demanded.

“Commander Andred, Castellan.”

“Ah, the new boy.” _Poor Hilred’s replacement._ “They say he’s sharp.” Hilred, by contrast, had been a semi-competent clot, but he had not deserved an end like that.

Kelner continued: “Commander Andred reports that the Lady Provost of the Prydonian Chapter is now personally at the scene, and he feels that…”

“Yes, yes.” Spandrell waved a dismissive hand. “He feels that we need somebody down there who outranks the Provost, to defuse the situation before it gets worse. Maybe he really is as sharp as they say. Fetch me my gown, Kelner. I’ll need to look official, I suppose.”

Again, Kelner seethed for the briefest of moments, no doubt telling himself indignantly that he was nobody’s valet, before going and doing as he was told anyway.

“A suspicious death at Prydon Academy.” Spandrell slowly shook his head as Kelner helped him on with the glittering ceremonial garment. “Do you remember the days when we didn’t _have_ murders on Gallifrey?”

“Indeed I do, Castellan.” Kelner actually sounded sincere for once. “They were not so very long ago, after all.”

“Nevertheless,” Spandrell told him, “at this precise moment I’m feeling rather nostalgic for them.”

* * *

Spandrell felt as if he were falling, falling forever through an abyss of blinding light and fear. Then he heard a soft snap of displacing air and the transmat pad was solid beneath his feet again and he could see the polished metal walls of the booth enclosing him on all sides. Transduction through the Vortex was hardly his preferred method of transport, but sometimes urgency had to outweigh comfort.

The booth doors slid noiselessly aside and he stepped out into what was widely acknowledged as one of the Citadel’s most salubrious sectors. He found himself in a broad, brightly lit public concourse lined with statuary and tastefully maintained plant life. The floor beneath his feet consisted of white marble and black onyx flagstones stretching away in a chequered game-board pattern. Far, far above, the crystal dome of the Citadel glinted in the molten light of Gallifrey’s glowing orange sky. The grand portal of the Prydon Academy Annexe loomed before him, flanked by tall, austere stone figures representing the personifications of Wisdom and Knowledge. By contrast, the dozen or so Chancellery Guards gathered around the entrance warding off curious passers-by seemed like dolls arranged around the statues’ feet.

A tall figure clad in an immaculately tailored red and white uniform was waiting in front of the booth, and now came smartly to attention: “My Lord Castellan.”

Spandrell gave a nod of acknowledgment. “Commander Andred, I presume.”

A rather less imposing individual wearing familiar striped cream and beige robes was also lurking in the vicinity of the transmat booths, and now approached with recording device outstretched: “Castellan, Public Record. Do you have any comment on the developing situation at…?”

“None,” Spandrell replied. “And what is your name, Commentator?”

“Ransell, sir,” the man replied. “Now, may I ask…?”

“Commentator Ransell.” Spandrell gave the man a penetrating stare. “Good. Now I know who to send the Guards after if I hear any whisper of these events in this evening’s PR videocast. Good day.”

He turned and set off for the Annexe entrance, leaving Andred to loom over the Commentator and send him on his way: “You heard the Castellan. Leave. Now.”

As Ransell slunk off, seeming understandably cowed, Andred fell into step alongside Spandrell. The Castellan’s shoes and the Commander’s high boots clattered on the hard, smooth paving.

“Commander,” said Spandrell, “perhaps you could brief me on this most unpleasant series of events?”

“Of course, sir.” Andred consulted his comm-ring; Spandrell saw glowing text scrolling across its tiny screen. “The initial incident took place at timeband increment six point two relative.”

“Not very long ago.”

“That’s correct, sir.” 

“And who is the deceased?” Kelner, for all his efficiency, had not seen fit to share that particular datum.

“An Academician Jelpax, sir,” Andred replied. “A Prydonian, of course. He was a lecturer in applied historical sciences, whatever that is.”

“And who discovered the body?”

Andred checked his notes again before replying. “A former pupil of his, apparently. She said that she had decided to pay him a visit in his rooms, which are just inside the entrance over there, and came across his, well, his remains. She seems to have run out past the porter’s lodge and more or less collided with Guardsman Maxil, who was on his rounds at the time.”

“An unfortunate coincidence,” Spandrell commented.

“Yes, Castellan. I have…spoken to Maxil about his decision to enter the Academy premises and view the body in place.”

“And there will be more speaking to Maxil to come,” Spandrell assured the Commander, “but that can wait until we have the present situation under control. Do we have the witness secure, at least?”

“She is in the porter’s lodge now, sir, under guard.”

“Under _our_ guard?”

“Of course, Castellan.”

Spandrell nodded, approvingly. “Good work, Commander. And where is the Lady Provost?”

“Inside the Annexe,” Andred reported. “She seems reluctant to leave Academy territory.”

“So much paranoia about these days.” They were at the cordon of Guardsmen posted across the entrance now. “Very well, I will speak with her on her own ground if that is what she wants.” He glanced up at Andred’s earnest face. “By the way, what was Guardsman Maxil’s first impression on viewing the remains?”

Andred hesitated for the briefest of moments before replying. “He seems fairly sure that the cause of death was a staser bolt, sir.” One of the very few ways to kill a Time Lord outright without triggering a regeneration. 

“No chance that it was self-inflicted, I suppose?”

“Maxil didn’t see any weapon at the scene, sir.”

Spandrell sighed. “No, of course not. We don’t have such luck.”

Leaving Andred with the line of Guardsmen, Spandrell went on into the Annexe alone. The concourse’s chequered floor pattern continued the length of the narrow, marble-lined tunnel beyond the outer portal and his footsteps echoed in the enclosed space, creating an uncomfortable sensation of being followed. He passed an open archway halfway along the left hand wall, almost certainly the lodge the Commander had mentioned, and approached the other cordon of guards he could glimpse at the far end of the tunnel, where there was a suggestion of another great open space. 

They were the mirror image of the Chancellor’s men; even their uniforms were of a similar design, except flame-orange in colour rather than red and white, and instead of stasers at their belts they were armed with iron-shod staves as tall as themselves. He could see them eyeing him suspiciously as he drew closer, waiting for an order from the severe, slender woman who stood behind their line, gloved hands clasped before her. She was simply dressed in an unadorned scarlet gown, her only decoration the bejewelled chain of office she wore around her neck. As he drew nearer still, he saw that the medallion suspended from it was a depiction in gold of the Great Seal of the Prydonian Chapter.

Spandrell halted a good ten paces from the row of orange-uniformed Proctors and bowed courteously before their leader: “My Lady Provost.”

The Lady Provost gave him a grave nod in return. “My Lord Castellan. I take it that your Guard Commander asked you to come down here?”

“As I am sure your Proctors asked for you. They did not feel qualified to deal with a question of such import at their own discretion.”

“I do not blame them,” she said.

Spandrell allowed himself a wry smile before continuing: “My Lady, I extend my most sincere apologies for the misunderstanding that has occurred here today, and ask your gracious permission to approach, that we might discuss how best to resolve this impasse.”

“Please do. As you say, there is much for us to discuss.” She waved the Proctors aside and gestured for him to enter the hallowed grounds they guarded.

“You know,” said Spandrell, looking about as he emerged from the entranceway, “I do not believe that I have ever been in here. It is certainly a most impressive sight.” 

He offered this opinion quite sincerely. The main hexangle of the Prydon Academy Annexe was easily as large a space as the Panopticon itself, its six sheer walls towering nearly as high as the dome far overhead, its white stones washed golden by the light of the sky. Staircases and balconies wound their way up the sides of the great well, layer upon layer, studded with doors and windows. At ground level, where the Castellan stood, the game-board stone floor of the passageway branched and branched again to form an intricate network of paths running between formally laid flowerbeds and topiary sculptures. The air was sweet with the scent of blossoms. There were manicured lawns of blood-red grass, twisted bushes hanging heavy with ornamental fruits, and at the very centre of the space a stand of tall, mature trees with velvet-black trunks and pointed silver leaves, blazing like a bonfire in the reflected light from above, casting a million motes of fiery luminescence onto the plants and walls around them.

“I often like to walk here when faced with particularly difficult questions,” the Lady Provost replied. “I find it quite clears my mind.”

“Perhaps you would like to walk with me a while?” Spandrell suggested. “Although I cannot promise your mind will be any clearer after speaking to me.”

“Of course.”

They set off along one of the pathways, passing a short flight of steps off to the left of the entrance, where two Proctors stood sentry outside a half-open wooden door.

“Is that where…?” Spandrell began.

“Yes,” the Lady Provost answered, curtly.

Spandrell also noticed what appeared to be another high-ranking Prydonian, this one wearing academic regalia, standing near the doorway in the company of a third Proctor. He seemed deep in thought, giving little indication of noticing the Castellan and the Lady Provost as they passed him by.

“And who is that, my Lady?” Spandrell asked.

“Academician Hedin,” she replied, and left it at that.

“And was he, too, a witness to the discovery of Academician Jelpax’s remains?”

“I am not at liberty to confirm that at the present time.”

“Ah. If my office does indeed end up investigating this matter, I should very much like an interview with him in any case.”

“I understand your men have a witness too?” the Lady Provost inquired. “The Time Lady who discovered the crime?”

“Or who may in fact have committed the crime,” he pointed out. “If indeed a crime has been committed. I do not intend to prejudge this inquiry. And an inquiry there must surely be, in one form or another.” He had spent many years perfecting the particular, rapid yet monotonous, tone of voice he used for these sorts of conversations. It never failed to wear his interlocutors down eventually, as slowly and surely as an iron rasp.

“I would need to question this other witness myself,” said the Lady Provost. “For my report to the Lord Rector of the Academy.”

“I’m sure we can agree some form of reciprocal arrangement,” Spandrell suggested.

They passed one bed where it was evident that some gardening had recently been in progress; there was freshly disturbed soil, some spotting the otherwise pristine flagstones of the path, and a roughly-woven basket containing several uprooted bedding plants sprouting from clumps of the same rich, dark substance. Spandrell paused a moment to examine them.

“You must know, my Lady,” he said, “that whatever the jurisdictional difficulties may be, I cannot in all conscience, or dutifulness, ignore this apparent crime. Any death under such circumstances, particularly that of a Time Lord and Academician, is a very grave matter that must be investigated at the highest level. And with all due deference, the highest level in this context would be my office, not yours.”

“I know that very well,” she retorted, acidly. “Do not think that I am trying to be needlessly obstructive, Castellan, but there are certain customs and protocols that must be respected in these matters. It is a question of precedent, and of maintaining the constitutional independence of the Academy and of my Chapter.”

“I understand.” They continued on their stroll in the direction of the hexangle’s central copse.

“I have sworn a solemn oath,” the Lady Provost informed him, “to safeguard the faculty, student body and physical and intellectual assets of Prydon Academy against all external interference.”

“As I have sworn a solemn oath to protect the security of the Citadel and the High Council of Time Lords against all threats, foreign and domestic.” Spandrell paused again to inspect one particularly gnarled shrub that stood near the edge of the path, its deep maroon foliage exuding a sickly sweet perfume.

“A carrion-bush,” the Lady Provost commented. “It attracts small flying creatures by smelling like a week-old carcass, and then…” She touched a gloved finger to one of the broad, hearts-shaped leaves and it instantly folded in two, gripping the digit with surprising firmness. “It’s a carnivore, you see,” she explained as she pulled free from the plant’s embrace. “Hiding in plain sight.”

“There are many carrion-bushes growing in the Citadel, then,” Spandrell observed dryly.

“There are, Castellan. I assure you, there are.”

“Let me put it this way, my Lady,” said Spandrell. “How many cases of murder have you had to investigate during your tenure as Prydonian Provost?”

“None,” she replied, “as you well know. And how many have you investigated?”

“Over the course of my long career, half a dozen or so.” He did not, of course, mention that all of those had been the responsibility of the same perpetrator, or that all had been committed within hours of each other, not so very long ago.

“Including the assassination of the late Lord President.”

“Yes.” Spandrell glanced back at the row of Proctors still loitering near the entrance. “Do you think your Proctors have the facilities or the expertise to investigate such a case, were it to be left to them?”

She let out a breath, loudly, her annoyance clearly audible: “Castellan…”

“Did you know the dead man, Jelpax?” he asked her, abruptly. “As a fellow Prydonian?”

“I did.”

“And what was he like?”

“A brilliant mind,” she said. “A good man and a great scientist. I wouldn’t have counted him as a personal friend, but I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“And if it came down to a choice between respecting the customs and protocols or ensuring that his killer was held to account, my Lady? What then?”

The Lady Provost took a very intense interest in the carrion-bush for several long moments before speaking again. “I have certain responsibilities,” she said.

“Of course.”

“Even if I were to order my men to stand aside and allow you to investigate,” she told him, “I am duty bound to make a full report of what has transpired here to the Lord Rector.”

“I would expect nothing less,” said Spandrell.

“And he in turn will for a certainty bring the matter to the attention of the Lord Cardinal, with particular emphasis upon the behaviour of your Guardsmen. I feel you should know this in advance.”

“The Chancellor’s Guardsmen, but I appreciate your concern,” said Spandrell, and meant it. “However, I am willing to accept whatever consequences may come my way. Bringing a murderer to justice is my only concern right now.”

The Lady Provost nodded: “Very well, Castellan.” She turned to the Proctors guarding the gate, raising her voice to be heard across the intervening distance: “Stand back! Let them in!”

“You’ve made the right choice,” Spandrell told her, quietly, so as not to be overheard.

She looked at him. “You might not be saying that tomorrow, Castellan.”

* * * 

Beyond the wooden door that the Proctors had been guarding there was a short hallway paved in the same black and white pattern as the entrance passage and hexangle.

Spandrell paused at the entrance, noting the sturdy bolts and chain on the inside of the door, in addition to the large ornate lock with its convolutedly-shaped keyhole. Old-fashioned, but secure. Either Academician Jelpax had been in the habit of leaving his door unlocked when he was in his rooms, or he had opened it to allow his killer entry.

_Or the bolts and chain were unfastened and his killer had a key…?_

Further doors led off the hall into living quarters, a laboratory or workshop of sorts, and finally an office or study. It was here that the dead man lay.

“Holy spack!” Commander Andred backed quickly out of the last doorway, allowing Spandrell to enter in his stead. Spandrell noticed him making the sign of the circle, the ancient Gallifreyan ward against the goddess Death. That would be regarded as an indication of superstitious or plebeian leanings in the upper tiers of Time Lord society, the Castellan thought. “Apologies, Castellan,” Andred muttered, weakly.

Spandrell refrained from judging him, all things considered. Death was encountered so rarely within the rarefied confines of the Citadel, with regeneration so prevalent, even if conditions were somewhat different in the Shobogan settlements, and even more so in Outer Gallifrey. Violent death was even rarer. As for a death like this one…

Jelpax, Spandrell would have been willing to wager, had almost certainly seen better days. He had clearly been a tall, powerfully-built man in this incarnation, while alive, but not anymore. His body lay curled up in the middle of the tiled floor, halfway between the door and the ornate desk that stood against the far wall; a wizened, blackened mummy wearing the remains of a simple scarlet cassock without jewellery or insignia, a silk sash cinched around its waist. There was a toppled chair beside the body, decorated in the same baroque style as the desk, and a musky, burned smell hung in the air. The corpse’s limbs were twisted, the shrunken skin stretched tight over brittle bones like charred parchment. Almost certainly the result of a staser’s regeneration-aborting zygma radiation if Spandrell was any judge. The face beneath the wine-coloured skullcap was a skeletal ruin, two deep pits of shrivelled skin where Jelpax’s eyes had once been.

“Holy spack indeed,” Spandrell agreed, turning his attention to the floor around the corpse. “What’s this, Commander?” he asked, pointing to one of the white flagstones near the threshold of the study. “Who has been in here since the body was discovered?”

“Nobody, Castellan, as far as I know,” Andred replied, “apart from the witness who found the body and Guardsman Maxil. I suppose one of the Proctors might…”

“No, the Lady Provost confirmed that none of her people had entered the rooms. She also confirmed that there is no electronic surveillance in the hexangle. They cannot spy on noble Academicians and their acolytes as if they were common Shobogans, apparently!” 

Snorting scornfully, Spandrell stooped to examine the large, dirty footprint that marred the stone’s milky surface. “On the big side for a Time Lady, wouldn’t you say? And that’s not the tread pattern of a Guard boot.” He examined the moist, dark particles of which the print seemed to be composed, thinking back to the basket in the hexangle, the uprooted plants… “Commander,” he said, straightening up, “find out who maintains the garden outside, and where they can be found right now.”

“At once, Castellan.” Andred saluted and bustled off down the hallway, no doubt only too glad to be out of the dead man’s presence.

Spandrell remained where he was, taking in the scene, looking for any detail, however small, that might constitute a clue. There had possibly been a struggle, he thought. The chair had been toppled, but the position of the cadaver did not indicate Jelpax had been sitting in it when it had. Maybe he had knocked it over when he fell, or when he was fighting in vain for his lives.

_Too many maybes already, Spandrell; confine yourself to the facts!_

There was a computer terminal built into the desk, its screen shattered, circuits visible behind the smashed glass. The control panel beneath had been pounded as well, dented sufficiently to be coming away from the desktop, dislodged keys littering the floor next to the chair. The same was true of the desktop transmat dumbwaiter off to one side, its transmitter pad broken clean in two, gleaming components strewn around it. On the desk blotter there was a finely-crafted comm-ring, bent completely out of shape, its small round screen ground to powder. He might have put these acts of destruction down to a struggle too, except that they seemed so thorough. Effort had gone into this, repeated blows with something hard and heavy. 

Looking around, he spotted a small golden statuette, some sort of academic award, lying on its side in the far corner of the room. Even from here, he could see its polished granite base was chipped. An impromptu hammer? And the room was long but narrow; if Jelpax and the fallen chair had already been in their current positions, blocking access to the desk, then where would somebody stand to wield it? The only possible space he could see was at the corner of the desk nearest the ruined transmat. He saw that the flagstone beneath that corner was cracked from side to side, as neatly as if struck by a mason’s chisel. The statuette could have been dropped when the work of smashing was done and fallen there, Spandrell theorised.

_And rolled over to the corner…? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Is it even heavy enough to break marble like that?_

As he took a step further into the room, Spandrell felt something crunch beneath his foot. Glass, he decided as he crouched again to get a closer view. There were tiny fragments littering much of the study floor, as bright as diamonds now that he was seeing them from a different angle. Jelpax was lying on top of them; they had hit the floor before he had.

Spandrell patted a hand against the tiles, letting some of the fragments adhere to his glove, peering closely at them. Not glass from the computer screen or the transmat pad, he decided; these shards had a delicate greenish tint. He also detected a faint aroma that he could not quite place. Curious; one of the larger ones he could see seemed to be stained with a gleaming waxy substance, rose-pink in colour. He carefully pulled a kerchief from the pocket of his robe, brushed the glass pieces from his glove into it and folded it before pocketing it once more. 

He turned around to examine the walls on either side of the doorway, invisible from the hall. Shelves, for the most part, displaying antique scrolls and books as well as row upon translucent row of more modern and practical data-discs. There were also examples of older storage media and some of the machinery required to access them; antique wire reels, blocky info-cartridges and even sparkling strings of ancient micromonolithic holo-crystals. There was a small side-table standing next to the door, identical in style to the desk and chair. There was a silver tray upon it, and upon the tray a tall fluted decanter of delicately-tinted green glass, half full of some dark liquid, as well as three matching glasses and room for a fourth. 

_Well, that explains the fragments. If only all mysteries were so simple…_

Beside the tray lay a pair of long-wristed gloves. Spandrell could see that they had been made for somebody with larger hands than his own. That and the fact that their heavy velvet fabric matched the purple-red shade of Jelpax’s headwear and sash suggested their likely ownership. 

_Time Lords sometimes remove their gloves during judicial proceedings or formal meetings, as a symbol that they have nothing to hide… And sometimes they remove them when…_

Spandrell gingerly unstopped the decanter and inclined his head to sniff its opening. He smelled the tart bouquet of fine Arcadian wine; old Engin’s favourite tipple, in fact. If it were drugged or poisoned his nose could not detect it. He confirmed that two of the tall, narrow glasses were dry, with a few particles of dust showing that they had not been used in some time. The third smelled of wine like the decanter and retained a reddish smear at its bottom. He realised now that that was what he had smelled on the broken glass as well.

_Two glasses of wine, both drained because there is no puddle on the floor. One dropped and broken, one carefully replaced after use. Jelpax and his killer shared a drink before things turned violent? Mere supposition!_

The stain on the intact glass, he satisfied himself, was not the same as the waxy substance on the shattered piece.

_Poison in one of the glasses rather than the bottle? No, you’re getting ahead of yourself again. No real evidence of anything other than death by staser._

Spandrell had been putting the final task off until last. It was not going to be pleasant. Crouching again, he took a firm grip on the deceased Academician’s arm and heaved. He prided himself on being stronger than he looked, and had little difficulty in turning the corpse over. That did nothing to make him any happier about the smell, or the small crackling, rustling sounds as the artificially-decayed flesh moved.

_Nothing._

He stood up, looking down at the floor where Jelpax had been lying. Nothing but broken glass and the game-board pattern. He had been half-hoping for a used staser or a suicide note, preferably both.

_We don’t have such luck,_ he reminded himself again.

Spandrell emerged back into the daylight to find the Proctors still loitering about in an unwelcoming manner, now joined by half a dozen Guards. Andred stood at the foot of the steps leading up to Jelpax’s rooms.

“The Lady Provost is in the porter’s lodge questioning our witness as you permitted, Castellan,” the Commander confirmed. He appeared to be on the point of saying more, but held his tongue.

“Speak freely, Commander,” Spandrell urged him.

“I just hope the Lady Provost isn’t helping the witness…well, to get her story straight, as the Shobogans say. They say the Prydonian Chapter looks after its own.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Spandrell confessed, “but having spoken to her I believe the Lady Provost is as sincere in her desire to see justice done in this case as I am in mine.”

Andred consulted his comm-ring: “Technician Rodan and her assistants will be here shortly to take charge of the evidence.”

“Excellent.” Rodan was assigned to the Castellan’s office on an Academy internship and was, Spandrell considered, one of his sharpest people. “I will want the scene fully documented in place, and then all physical evidence catalogued and moved carefully to our laboratory in the Capitol for further testing. The…the deceased should be taken to the crypt beneath the Panopticon. I will request that the Surgeon General perform a complete post-mortem examination there.”

“Very good, Castellan,” Andred acknowledged. “And I checked with the Academy Bursar’s office regarding the identity of the gardener who was working here today.” 

“And?”

“A Shobogan, sir, name given as Gilbas, claims to be resident somewhere in Low Town.”

“Of course,” Spandrell quietly observed. “You can’t have noble Academicians doing their own gardening.”

“He hasn’t worked here at the Annexe for very long,” Andred reported, “but he has a Level Three Work Permit.” 

“So he is considered reliable and hardworking on the basis of his past appointments.”

“Yes, Castellan.” The Commander bowed his head to look at the comm-ring once more. “It says here that he’s had three Citadel residency applications denied, but that’s not unusual given the accommodation shortages since the Resignation Day disaster.”

“Again, you can’t have noble Academicians turned out into the corridors to make room for mere hardworking gardeners.” Spandrell realised his sarcastic asides were sailing well over the top of Andred’s shiny red helmet, so supposed he had better desist.

“He entered the Citadel by the Other’s Gate at timeband one point seven relative,” the Commander continued, “well in time for his work-segment starting, and has permission to remain within the Citadel until nine point nine. However, as you can see, he seems to have absented himself already.”

“And taken his tools with him,” Spandrell murmured, glancing in the direction of the disturbed flowerbed. Only the basket seemed to have been left behind. “Commander, I want you to run a sector by sector trace to find that permit, and hopefully also its owner if he’s still inside the Citadel. I think he may well be our third witness-cum-suspect in this case.”

“And alert Guard leaders to stop and search all gate traffic in case he tries to leave?” Andred asked.

“Yes, Commander.”

“I’ve already taken the liberty of issuing orders for both those measures, Castellan.”

Spandrell gave a brief chuckle. “Remarkable; a Commander who actually commands! Something of an innovation as far as the Chancellery Guard is concerned, but a welcome one all the same. I think we will get along very well, Andred.”

The Commander tried hard not to look pleased with himself. “Thank you, Castellan.”

“And now,” said Spandrell, “I must question our suspects. I mean, our _witnesses_.”


	2. Chapter 2

Academician Hedin was still standing where Spandrell had seen him earlier, not far from the entrance to Jelpax’s rooms. Now there was a red-uniformed Guardsman attending upon him, although the Proctor who had stood there earlier was lurking close by pretending to look at the flowers.

Hedin was currently a trim, sharp-featured man with prominent eyebrows and a certain air of patrician languor. His elaborate academic gown was intricately patterned in swirls of orange and red and was moreover studded with gleaming golden starbursts that appeared to have been sewn to the fabric. Spandrell knew as a rough rule of thumb that usually the gaudier the dress the more esteemed the Academician. On this basis, Hedin seemed to be a most accomplished scholar indeed.

“Is it true?” he asked as he saw Spandrell walk up to him. “What the Provost said?”

“And what did the Lady Provost say, my Lord?” Spandrell asked him, setting his comm-ring to record as he did so.

“Well, that poor old Jelpax was dead. Murdered, in fact.” 

“That does appear to be the case,” Spandrell corroborated, “although our investigation is in its early stages. I’m hoping you will be able to assist it by answering a few questions.”

“We _don’t have_ murders here,” Hedin protested. “This isn’t Low Town, it’s the Citadel! Apart from that assassination business, but that was a one-off, surely.”

“My Lord, did you know Academician Jelpax?”.

“Of course,” said Hedin. “Ever since we were both acolytes here ourselves.”

“So you would count him as a friend?”

Hedin appeared to consider the question before voicing an answer. “I’m not sure Jelpax really had friends. He was likeable enough, even sociable at times, especially in his earlier incarnations, but he was a person of moods and enthusiasms; went through phases. Even more than we Time Lords normally do. Most of the time he had more interest in ideas than people. He was devoted to his studies, you see.” 

“So he wasn’t in the habit of, for example, inviting people to his rooms to share a glass of wine?”

“Well, if he was, I wasn’t one of them.” Hedin absently picked at a loose thread protruding from his gown. “In recent centuries, our interactions have been almost wholly professional.”

“How did you come to be here today?” Spandrell tapped his comm-ring and saw Andred had sent him some preliminary notes. He tapped it again to send the text skidding across the miniscule display. “According to the Proctors, they were responding to the initial cry of alarm when they detained you approaching Academician Jelpax’s rooms.”

“I wouldn’t say _detained_ …” Hedin frowned. “They asked me to wait here until the Provost arrived.”

“In any case, they noted you appeared to be in a hurry, my Lord. Were you on your way to see Academician Jelpax?”

“I should have thought that was obvious,” Hedin shot back. “I was walking towards his rooms after all. He called me, if you must know, and asked me to come to his study at once, although he did not mention glasses of wine that I recall…”

“What time was this?” Spandrell cut in, curtly.

Hedin shrugged. “Relative timeband six point zero.”

_Mere increments before Jelpax’s death…_

“And where were you then?”

“In my own rooms,” Hedin replied. He turned to one side and pointed at a balcony high up on one of the hexangle’s sides: “Right over there, in fact.”

“And how would you describe Academician Jelpax’s mood, his manner, during this call? Did he seem excited? Agitated? In fear for his lives, perhaps?”

Hedin’s thick brows knitted together, as if he were making an effort to recall. “None of those things, Castellan. He was quite matter of fact. I assumed he wished to discuss the work we had been collaborating upon.”

“ _At once_ , though, Academician. That suggests a certain urgency, as did your _hurrying_ towards his rooms.”

“Everything was urgent for Jelpax,” said Hedin. “He was not a patient man. As it happened I was at that moment engaged in a tutorial with one of my acolytes, so I delayed a few increments before coming down here. I started _hurrying_ , as you put it, when I arrived in the hex here and saw all sorts of Guards and Proctors and a Time Lady in white running back and forth in a state of considerable agitation. And that was when the Proctors barred my way.”

Spandrell nodded, thinking hard. “You were collaborating with Academician Jelpax on some work, you said. What was his particular area of study?”

“He was an applied historian specialising in diachronological causality theory,” Hedin replied. “Yes, people do rather tend to glaze over when one says that.”

“You mean like this?” Spandrell deadpanned. “Try to remember you are speaking to a jurist by training, not a scientist, Academician.”

“Quite. Well, it’s not really as arcane a field as most people think. You just have to bear in mind that time and history are not actually the same thing.” Words seemed to come easily to Academician Hedin; Spandrell had a sudden vivid image of him holding court in some teeming Academy lecture theatre. “Think of spacetime, Castellan, as the substrate, the recording medium if you will, and history as the information stored upon it, that which gives it meaning and form. What Jelpax did was study the structure of that information, the patterns in it, from a pentadimensional perspective. In theory, if you can understand those patterns, you can predict the relative future, maybe even influence it. Maybe retroactively influence the past as well.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing Gallifrey has laws against,” Spandrell observed. Attempting to predict Gallifrey’s relative future or travelling to her relative past was the great heresy, that which Rassilon himself had condemned in the most uncompromising terms.

Hedin, however, seemed undeterred by such considerations: “Just think, though, how easy it must have been to solve a murder in the Old Time. They’d have had no qualms in those days about using an Extraction Chamber to pull poor Jelpax out of his own timestream at the very moment of death and _asking_ him who’d killed him.”

“Under today’s laws,” Spandrell pointed out, “that might well be considered a more serious crime than the murder itself.”

“Well, Castellan, you’d know better than me about that.” Hedin picked at the loose thread again. “It’s true that Jelpax sailed rather close to the timewinds on occasion, expressed some rather controversial ideas about the applications of his work, but that’s all part of the academic process. If one can’t freely share ideas here at the Academy, well, it’s a sad state of affairs, really.”

“And do you work in the same field yourself?”

“Oh, no,” Hedin answered quickly, as if Spandrell had just accused him of something. “I’m a biodatalogist, for my sins. You’ve just glazed over again, Castellan. However, while it may not be obvious to laypeople, there is a surprising degree of overlap between the two sciences, certain interesting synergies that allowed for some very fruitful collaborations between Jelpax and myself. I deal in biodata, you see, and in a very real sense all a Time Lord’s biodata is, is history stored in organic form. Jelpax often spoke of one day being able to read and manipulate biodata patterns the way an applied historian aspires to do with the patterns of history. Imagine being able to predict or control the fate of a person, or alter their past. Rewrite them as a person, even.”

“Imagine,” said Spandrell, rather queasily.

“Make your job rather easier, I’d wager,” the Academician suggested.

“Yes. I suppose it would.” Spandrell thought that it was quite possibly the most terrifying suggestion he had ever heard.

“Most recently, however,” said Hedin, finally dislodging the loose thread, “we’d been collaborating on a rather different project.” He examined the hair-thin wisp of red silk between his fingers for an instant before flicking it away into the shrubbery. “I can’t go into the details, but we did manage to obtain a High Council permit for an archaeological expedition to the far hemisphere of Gallifrey…”

“The Death Zone?” Spandrell arched his eyebrows, feeling inexplicably uneasy. “Why would an Academician want to venture there? It’s nothing but desolation and ruins, and isn’t archaeology a rather specialised area?”

“Well,” Hedin responded, “applied history, a little like my own field, spent many millennia under an academic cloud, for the very reasons you alluded to just now. The Ban of Rassilon and so forth. Only in recent centuries have both disciplines come back into favour, and so much knowledge was lost in the intervening period. In many ways, we’re just now relearning things that were commonplaces in the Old Time, before the raising of the Citadel. So scholars such as Jelpax and myself must dabble in grave-robbing and rubble-sifting from time to time in an attempt to recover what has been forgotten.”

“And did your expedition meet with success?” Spandrell asked.

“I really couldn’t share the specifics before publication,” the Academician insisted. “Work in progress, you understand, and as hard as it may be to believe, plagiarism and claim-jumping represent very real dangers around here. Although apparently not the _worst_ …” He paused for a moment, giving a soft sigh as he looked down at the path beneath his feet. “None of it really matters now that Jelpax is gone. Without him…who knows if publication will ever be possible? Ideally, I’d like to get in there now.” He craned his neck towards the open doorway into the dead man’s rooms. “See what’s lying around, secure any data…”

“What is lying around,” Spandrell reminded him, “is Academician Jelpax, and nobody is allowed in there until my technicians have finished their forensic examination.”

“Yes,” said Hedin, sadly, although whether for the data or Jelpax Spandrell was unable to decide. “You’re quite right, of course.” He shook his head, visibly mystified: “You know, Castellan, for all of his impatience and outspokenness when it came to his work, at other times Jelpax really could be the most agreeable, inoffensive person you could hope to meet. Nobody would want to kill him, surely?”

“It seems at least one person did,” said Spandrell.

* * *

When Spandrell returned to the Annexe’s entrance, he found that it was no longer the deserted, echoing tunnel he had advanced along with trepidation a short while ago. Now, Guardsmen and technicians bustled back and forth, some carrying bulky scanning equipment or evidence boxes, others merely doing their best to look busy and important. It was not every day that a crime of this magnitude was committed in the Citadel, and some seemed determined to make the most of it.

He encountered Technician Rodan, contriving somehow to supervise the organised chaos in the passageway without getting so much as a crease in her own striking heliotrope ensemble.

“Apologies for dragging you away from your revision for the Seventh Grade examination,” Spandrell greeted her, “but needs must.”

“Oh, of course.” Rodan smiled. “Don’t apologise Castellan, I wouldn’t miss this for anything. Murder is _much_ more interesting than astrophysics!”

Spandrell wondered whether Academician Jelpax would agree with that.

He found the second of his two witnesses seated in a corner of the white-walled porter’s lodge where she had been sequestered for some time now. She barely acknowledged him as he entered and took a moment to assess her, affecting the air of bored hauteur that he would expect from a Time Lady of her social standing. That was surely the crest of the House of Heartshaven worked into the silver brooch securing the shoulder of her white samite dress; prestigious even among Prydonians. 

She would undeniably have been beautiful, had noticing such things not been considered woefully gauche in the high society of the Citadel, and was perhaps aware of it too. Certainly, her clothing, its cut and colour, seemed chosen to complement her build and complexion in a way that ceremonial robes and uniforms did not. The mass of dark hair piled high atop her head was secured by a long pin, its head bejewelled with tiny rubies and flecks of amber; Prydonian colours. Like the brooch, a subtle reminder of her affiliation and standing.

“Castellan.” The curly-haired Guardsman standing over her snapped to attention at the sight of him.

“Ah, Maxil.” Spandrell eyed him wearily. “You’re to blame for all of this commotion, I hear.”

“Hardly, Castellan,” Maxil spluttered, his usual officious, unsmiling self. “I was merely fulfilling my duties as a member of the Chancellery Guard. I had reason to believe a murder had been committed and if the Proctors want to be so precious about their jurisdiction…”

“We’ll discuss all of this later,” Spandrell assured him. “In painstaking detail, I’m sure. Now leave us. I need to question the witness.”

For a moment, Maxil seemed to be about to try continuing to argue his case, but then he gave a very hasty bow and just as abruptly beat his retreat: “As you wish, Castellan.”

Spandrell waited for him to leave before greeting the witness formally: “Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I rather doubt that,” she replied, before remembering her courtesy. “My Lord Castellan,” she added, with a slightly disdainful bob of her head, remaining very pointedly seated.

Spandrell found another chair, pulled it across to hers and very carefully lowered himself into it. He let her watch him switching his comm-ring to record once again, just so that she was aware of what kind of conversation this was. He watched her face, for any sign of a crack in that aristocratic mask. There it was; a slight frown, gone in an instant. That and the faint streak of cosmetic on her cheek where she had wiped away a tear at some point told him that she was far from being as unmoved by today’s events as she might want him to believe.

“I am told you were a former pupil of Academician Jelpax’s,” Spandrell began.

“That’s correct,” Romanadvoratrelundar answered, neutrally.

“Here at Prydon Academy?”

“Of course.”

“You are, however, no longer an acolyte here?”

“I graduated from Prydon a relative year ago,” she said. “With a triple First, actually.” She preened for a moment, her gleaming, rose-pink lips curling halfway to a smile, before that barely-noticeable frown cracked her mask again. “I had a very good teacher,” she added, very softly.

“And how do you occupy yourself now?” Spandrell asked her.

“Apart from my ceremonial duties as a Time Lady,” she answered, “I work in the Panopticon Library. At the moment I’m cataloguing the legacy tape-loop archive and transferring it to more modern storage media. Fascinating work. I also find time for my own historical studies.”

“And is that applied history?” Spandrell wondered. “Diachronological causality theory, perhaps?”

She arched one finely-shaped eyebrow, amused in spite of herself and the current situation. “You’ve clearly been talking to somebody on the faculty, Castellan. And no, that wasn’t my specialisation, although when I was still an acolyte I did assist Jelpax in his research. I have a working knowledge of that particular field, I would say, but I’m no expert.”

“Ah. And you remained in close touch with Academician Jelpax?”

“I did, Castellan.” Her left hand rested upon her knee, he saw. It was encased in an exquisitely fashioned glove of fine leather, the same shade of shimmering white as her dress. Her other hand was lost somewhere in the many folds of her long skirt.

“You would describe him as friend?”

“As close to a friend as one can have in the Citadel,” she answered. He noticed as she did so that she was not making eye contact with him.

“Academician Hedin told me that he knew Academician Jelpax for centuries and was not really sure that he had any friends.”

Her response came instantly: “Just because one knows somebody for a long time, it does not necessarily follow that one knows them well, Castellan.”

“Very true,” he conceded. “You consider that you yourself knew Academician Jelpax well?”

The eyebrow climbed again, not in amusement this time. “I didn’t say that.”

“Could you describe what happened today?” Spandrell requested. “For the official report?”

“Well.” Her other hand emerged from view and she clasped them together against her knee. He could see the tension in her shoulders, sense her discomfort at the question. “I finished at the Library at around five point eight in the timeband and decided to call on Jelpax here at the Annexe.”

“You just…decided this? On a whim, would you say?”

“I wanted to borrow a data-scroll from him,” she answered. “A treatise on five-dimensional spacetime constructs and their role in chronogenesis. I don’t expect that means much to a layman.”

“You expect correctly, my Lady,” said Spandrell. He was watching her hands, the way her long fingers knitted together. The knuckles of her right hand were white with strain. “And did you often call upon the Academician here?”

“From time to time.”

“And did you and Academician Jelpax ever share a glass of wine together during these social interactions?”

She frowned again, more deeply than before. “Once or twice, perhaps. We didn’t make a habit of it.”

“Please, go on,” he urged her.

She did: “I arrived here at six point one. I remember seeing the chronometer by the transmat booths in the concourse. I entered the hexangle.” She hesitated, raising her right hand to brush at her face, then grasping it with her left again to form another tangle of intertwined fingers in her lap.

That was when Spandrell registered that her right glove was missing.

“Jelpax’s door was unlocked,” she continued. “It usually was; he allowed his acolytes to see him whenever they wanted to. So I entered, and…” She noticed him looking at her hand, and concealed the fact well. The way she plunged her bare hand back among her skirt-folds and then covered it with the gloved one was almost casual. “And there he was lying in the study… Like _that_.” Romanadvoratrelundar’s voice faltered briefly. She took a very deep breath and let it out very slowly. “Like that,” she repeated in barely more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry to ask you to recall it, my Lady,” Spandrell interjected.

“No, it’s quite all right,” she said. “I’m quite all right.”

_But there was no white leather glove at the scene, or anywhere else that I could see…_

Spandrell plunged on with the questioning. “And what did you do upon discovering the body?”

“I tried to see if there was anything I could do to help him,” she recounted with hushed anguish now seeping freely through her composure. “It was very clear, however, that he…he was gone. And, I confess, I think I panicked a little at that point. I found myself running back out into the concourse screaming and shouting for help. And that was when I ran into Guardsman Maxil. I mean, I literally ran _into_ him.”

“And he accompanied you back to the scene?” 

“I rather insisted,” she said. “I more or less dragged him in here, to tell the truth. If he’s in any trouble for straying onto Academy grounds, then I should let you know that it was all down to me.”

“I’ll take that into consideration when I speak to Maxil later.”

“And after that…” She gave a small shrug, or perhaps a nervous start. “Well, I’ve been in here ever since waiting for permission to leave.”

“We’re almost finished,” Spandrell told her. “Just a few more things. Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, my Lady, but are you absolutely certain that you have told me everything you remember, and told it truthfully?”

She was suddenly very still, eyes steely as she regarded him. “Absolutely,” she said, coldly. “You have my solemn word as an invested Time Lady of the Prydonian Chapter, Castellan, and that should be enough for you.” She kept her anger contained well, but it was there in her tone and body language.

“Well,” he said, “you must understand that my duties usually bring me into contact with more plebeian classes than your own esteemed order, and I have found many times in such company that people’s solemn words are not always as solemn as they might claim.” He met her steely eyes with his own unwavering gaze. “However, I’m sure in the case of an invested Time Lady…”

She lowered her eyes and then looked off to one side before fixing him eye-to-eye again. He could almost see the intricate clockwork of her brain turning as she chose her next words. “There is one other detail,” she said eventually.

“Yes, my Lady?”

“Jelpax was very unostentatious in his dress and habits, but there was one particular item in his possession, a pendant.” She paused again, taking another deep breath. “It was a gift, of sentimental value to him, I think, and as far as I know he wore it at all times.”

“There was no such item on the body when I viewed it,” Spandrell informed her.

“No, I noticed it was gone too,” Romanadvoratrelundar agreed, “but at that moment I had no time to think about how unusual that was.”

“And can you describe this pendant?”

“Yes, it was a representation of a five-d history helix, in platinum microfilaments.” She evidently recognised his expression of incomprehension at this description: “A sort of twisted wreath shape,” she translated, “very bright and very light, but there was a tiny bead of dwarf star alloy set in a stasis field at its centre to give it weight and prevent it from blowing away or anything like that. The chain he wore it upon was silver, but quite plain.”

“You are clearly very familiar with this item,” Spandrell said.

“It was quite a unique piece. I’d certainly never seen one like it before.” She looked at him, very levelly. “The more I think about it, the more I think his killer must have taken it for some reason, although I couldn’t say why. It wasn’t an heirloom or historical artefact; it was just a gift, a trinket. Of no great value.”

“Not here anyway,” Spandrell mused. “Very well, my Lady, I think that is all for now.”

“I can go?” she asked, with obvious relief.

“I may need to question you again,” he explained, “depending on the direction my investigation takes, but I will be sure to let you know if that proves necessary. Please leave your contact co-ordinates with one of the Guardsmen before you leave.” He stood up slowly, feeling his bones creak. “Oh, and please remain within the confines of the Citadel until further notice.”

She rose gracefully from her chair, still using her gloved hand to conceal her bare one, and gave him another unreadable glance:

“Castellan, why would _anybody_ want to venture outside the Citadel?”

* * *

When Spandrell left the Annexe entrance for the rather less confining surroundings of the concourse outside, he found a few Guards still standing watch and Commander Andred speaking into his comm-ring in a state of noticeable exasperation:

“And how did this happen? You don’t mean to tell me…?”

“Is there a problem, Commander?” asked Spandrell. Andred almost jumped as the Castellan appeared unexpectedly at his elbow, but to his credit managed to make it look as if he were standing to attention. 

“Castellan, there’s been a report on the whereabouts of the Shobogan Gilbas,” he volunteered. “A biodata scanner detected him leaving the Citadel by the Low Postern at timeband seven point three.”

“From your expression, Commander,” Spandrell speculated, “you are not about to tell me that he was safely apprehended and is now in detention waiting to be questioned.”

“My apologies, sir,” Andred all but stammered, “but, but the Low Postern was not guarded. Gilbas has escaped the Citadel.”

“Ah.” Spandrell let out all of his breath in one long exhalation. “I see. Is that the Gate Captain you’re speaking to there?”

“Yes, Castellan. Gate Captain Soldex, Sector Fourteen.”

“Patch him through to me,” Spandrell requested, activating his own ring. “Captain, this is the Castellan speaking.”

“Yes sir,” came the tinny voice from the ring’s minute speaker.

“The Low Postern, it is a gate, is it not?”

“Sir?” Soldex sounded rather taken aback.

“Is the Low Postern a gate, Captain?”

“Well… _yes_ , sir.”

“And it is located in your sector, Sector Fourteen?”

“Yes sir.”

“I thought as much. Now, did not Commander Andred issue an order earlier for you to stop and search all gate traffic in an effort to locate a possible suspect in a very serious criminal investigation?”

Soldex’s nervous breathing was quite audible on the comm channel. “Yes, Castellan.”

“So, if the Low Postern is, as we have established, in fact a gate, why did you take it upon yourself to exclude it from this order?”

“Well…” Soldex was speechless for a few moments before continuing. “Well, sir…the Low Postern is never guarded. Surely you…?”

“I am aware of what happens at the Low Postern,” Spandrell snapped. “The order specified _all gate traffic_. _All_ , Captain.”

“Castellan.” The Captain seemed to be struggling for words. “My…apologies…”

“I should demote you to guarding the Ceremonial Wardrobe,” Spandrell told him, “but I’m not sure the Capitol is ready for the sight of the Lords and Ladies of the High Council wandering about naked!” He killed the call with an angry flick of his finger and stalked off towards the transmat booths.

“Sir?” Andred inquired, as impassively as possible as he hurriedly followed.

“It’s not your fault, Commander.” Spandrell found his anger subsiding into a sort of dull, resigned frustration. “You can’t expect them to go from playing at being toy soldiers for millennia to actually being an effective security force just because of one assassination… Hopefully, you’ll be able to see them through that transition, before they’re _really_ called upon to serve one of these days.”

“I’ll certainly try, sir.”

“In the meantime,” said Spandrell as he arrived at the row of booths, “I want you to turn out every Guard you can, lock down all – _all_ – Citadel gates until further notice, checkpoints on the main Arcadia road as well in case he’s gone further afield. Then search every molecule of Low Town until this Gilbas turns up.”

“And if he doesn’t, sir?”

Spandrell stepped into the nearest polished metal cylinder. “Then…then we turn over every rock and bush in Outer Gallifrey until we find him. That fool of a Gate Captain can do it personally.”

Andred inclined his head formally: “Very good, Castellan.”

“And now,” said Spandrell, unenthusiastically, reaching for the button to close the booth door, “I have been summoned to an audience with the Lord Chancellor, who will no doubt want a full explanation as to what has happened here today. Wish me luck; I think I’ll need it.”

* * *

The Chancellery was situated in one of the highest pinnacles of the Capitol, overlooking the great tiered pit of the Panopticon. The view from up here was considered one of the best in the entire Citadel, Spandrell was reminded as he stood in the antechamber to the Chancellor’s private office, gazing out of the floor-to-ceiling picture windows. Or it had been, at any rate.

Since the Eye of Harmony’s brief opening, the Panopticon was a shambles of broken masonry and toppled statues, swarming Shobogan work-gangs toiling around the timeband to clear it and effect repairs. The picture in some other sectors was even worse; thousands dead, thousands more homeless. As ever, the worst of it fell upon the lower levels of society as the elites almost instinctively looked after their own. Some sectors even now simmered with discontent and grievance, the Guards keeping the lid on them with a heavier hand than Spandrell would have liked in the normal course of things. 

From up here, he could see the black outlines of broken towers silhouetted against the fiery sky, look down on whole districts in ruins and trace the silvery arc of the great crack that had opened in the Citadel dome, large enough to fly a gunship through. A million refugees had fled the dome’s confines since the disaster, swelling Low Town and the scattered Dry-Land settlements to bursting, even spreading into Outer Gallifrey where the resources necessary to survival were vanishingly scarce already…

“Lord Borusa will see you now, Castellan.”

The words of Councillor Thalia, the Lord Chancellor’s personal aide, tore Spandrel out of his gloomy reverie. He acknowledged her with a brief nod before making his way towards the grand double doors leading into the inner office.

Borusa was stood with his back to the entrance, apparently deep in contemplation of the same view Spandrell had been looking at, through his own set of enormous windows. He wore the scarlet working vestments of his original office; Lord Cardinal of the Prydonian Chapter. That was an additional wrinkle in this particular case.

_Prydonians, Prydonians everywhere…_

Borusa turned as soon as he heard Spandrell come into the room. The light through the windows surrounded him like a halo.

“My Lord Chancellor.” Spandrell bowed low.

“My Lord Castellan.” Borusa returned the gesture. He had regenerated recently, on medical advice to correct a long term health defect. The only noticeable effect had been to make his physical appearance that of a slightly older man, and his general demeanour rather more irascible. “And I’m not sure whether you should really address me in those terms quite yet; the High Council still haven’t stirred themselves to ratify my appointment.”

“Acting Lord Chancellor?” Spandrell suggested.

Borusa considered it, critically: “No, that implies a temporary position. Maybe Lord Chancellor- _elect_?”

Spandrell bowed again: “My Lord Chancellor- _elect_.”

“I suppose that will do.” Borusa settled himself in the large, high-backed chair (some would have said “throne”) behind the Lord Chancellor’s vast desk and courteously gestured for Spandrell also to be seated. “Now,” he said, in a tone that must have struck terror into generations of acolytes during the many centuries he had spent lecturing at Prydon Academy, “what have these Guardsmen of yours been up to, Castellan?”

Spandrell decided that this was probably not the time to remind the Lord Chancellor-elect that these Guardsmen were, technically speaking, his rather than the Castellan’s. “My Lord…ah, sir,” he began, “they were reacting as best they could to an extremely grave criminal matter. You know how deeply I respect the jurisdictions and customs of the various Chapters…”

“Oh, indeed I do,” Borusa interrupted, sceptically. “I have just now been speaking to Lord Zorac, the Rector of Prydon Academy. He was always a dullard when he was my pupil, and years and advancement have not improved him. Nonetheless, he was not best pleased at the way your men, as he saw it, invaded a hallowed sanctuary of learning. And also trampled his flowerbeds, or so he claimed.”

“I saw no flowerbed-trampling taking place,” said Spandrell, “although I am sorry that the Lord Rector was offended. However, in this instance I could not allow considerations of academic immunity or Chapter independence to hinder my investigation. This is, by any measure, a most serious occurrence with implications for the security and wellbeing of the Citadel and of Gallfrey as a whole.”

“Murder on Gallifrey,” Borusa observed. “Another one. They’re becoming distressingly common in recent times.”

Spandrell shared his evident disquiet on that point quite sincerely: “Indeed, my Lord.”

Borusa rose again and paced over to the windows, staring out once more at the view. Spandrell felt it was only courteous to join him.

“Look at it, Castellan,” the Lord Chancellor-elect instructed him. “Half of it in ruins since the Eye opened; the other half teetering on the brink. I read your report yesterday; the food riot among the Shobogans in Sector Twenty. A _food riot_ , on _Gallifrey_?” Borusa sounded aghast.

“I find my general feeling of apprehension increasing with every timeband, sir,” Spandrell disclosed.

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Borusa. “We live in dangerous times; you know that better than most. The full details of the Resignation Day crisis are still not a matter of public record, and for very good reason. It would not take very much at all to spark off something…something terrible. You don’t need me to tell you that, Castellan; you’re old enough to remember Morbius, how he ended up coming to power.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now this…” Borusa gloomily continued. “This… _Jelpax_ business. He was always a thorn in my side when I was Rector. Now he’s gone and got himself murdered at exactly the wrong moment. Typical of the man.”

“My Lord, do I have your authorisation to continue with the investigation?” Spandrell asked.

“In some ways,” said Borusa, seemingly ignoring the question, “your violation of the sacred jurisdictions of Prydon Academy is not a bad thing at all. Although don’t tell Zorac I said that.”

“It will remain between us, sir.”

“I’m in something of a difficult position, you see.” It was uncharacteristic for Borusa to admit to not being in exactly the position he wanted to be in, Spandrell thought. Things really must be poised on the brink of disaster. “I took up the duties of the Chancellor’s office in the aftermath of the recent crisis,” he recounted, “because quite frankly, who else was up to it? Gallifrey was in desperate need of competent governance. However, I also remain Lord Cardinal of the Prydonian Chapter, because, well, again, who is there to succeed me that would be able to navigate these difficult times? _Zorac_? Dear me…”

“If I may speak candidly, sir,” Spandrell interjected, “some would say that in this particular case, as you are my direct superior, and given the intimate involvement of members of your Chapter in the events around Academician Jelpax’s death…”

Borusa finished the sentence for him: “That there exists a significant conflict of interest? Do you take me for some first decade acolyte, that that hadn’t occurred to me? Of course there is. And don’t think the noble Lords and Ladies of the High Council won’t exploit it to the full in their efforts to unseat me.”

That was certainly a new angle. Spandrell had had no inkling that Borusa’s position might not be as secure as it had seemed ever since he had unilaterally moved into the Chancellor’s office and started carrying out its functions. “My Lord, you know the duties of my own office forbid me from direct involvement in politics, but… _really_?”

“Oh yes,” said Borusa, “the knives are out. The Arcalians and Patrexes are grumbling about too much power being in Prydonian hands. They’re already suggesting that there should be an agreement that the next Lord or Lady President, when – _when_ , mark you, not _if_ – the High Council removes the current President-elect, should be a non-Prydonian. Perhaps from one of the Chapters Minor, it has been mooted, because… _they deserve a chance too_.” Borusa shook his head at the very idea.

“Can they do that, sir? Remove the President-elect, that is?”

“A very good question, Castellan, and one with which greater legal minds even than my own have been grappling ever since he forsook his duties and took off in that decrepit TT capsule of his. There is talk of a precedent having been set by the deposition of none other than the aforementioned Lord President Morbius, although I think we can agree that the circumstances there were rather different from those which currently face us.”

As far as Spandrell could see there was no comparison at all. “I think we can, my Lord.”

“In some ways, the current interregnum is a blessing. The continued absence of the President-elect… _simplifies_ matters considerably, allows necessary but difficult actions to be taken for Gallifrey’s good. Provided of course that he doesn’t do anything so asinine as coming back here and actually trying to fulfil the office, although he never seemed enamoured of responsibility or hard work during his Academy years.” Borusa winced at the memory. “If the Councillors get their wish of deposing him, however, and manage to install a new Scendle or Dromeian Lord or Lady President, he or she can appoint a new Chancellor, probably an Arcalian if I read the current mood on the Council correctly, who will wield the real power in the new government. And probably a new Castellan too.”

“Oh, they can have this job if they want it,” Spandrell murmured.

“Gallifrey needs you,” Borusa told him, with disturbing sincerity. “You’re one of the few people I can trust to stand between the Citadel and anarchy without succumbing to the urge to play at politics. Vanity; that’s what motivates half the Council. Infatuation with the sounds of their own voices. They wrap themselves in the Constitution, of course, but they defile that holy document by association. They’d rather sit around arguing while the planet burns around them than actually _do_ anything; humbling one Chapter and elevating the others is more important to them than whether the inhabitants of Sector Twenty are fed. That’s why I assumed this office, and why I must retain it. Not out of any personal ambition; it has never been about that.”

Spandrell did not feel qualified to comment. He merely nodded: “My Lord.”

Borusa did not seem to notice his noncommittal tone. “And that is where your investigation is useful,” he said. “And the reason why I do indeed give it my full authorisation for the time being, and will publicly defend the Guard’s actions at the Academy Annexe today. Zorac will be incensed, and no doubt vocal about it, and any such public falling-out between myself and Prydon Academy will be taken by some as an indication that my days as Lord Cardinal are numbered.”

Spandrell saw the sense in it: “Which will weaken the argument by some Councillors that you are acting as a Prydonian rather than as Lord Chancellor, and maybe sway some of the waverers into your camp.”

Borusa gave him an approving nod: _top marks, acolyte_! “You’re better at this politics business than you’re willing to admit, Castellan. Now go, and continue causing trouble. And if you actually find out who killed Jelpax, I suppose that’s a bonus too.”

Spandrell bowed again: “At once, my Lord.” He paused before leaving: “There are one or two aspects of my investigation with which you might be able to assist me, sir.”

Borusa glanced at his desk chronometer: “I have a High Council session at nine point one, Castellan, but go on.”

“Academician Hedin, sir. Do you trust him?”

“No,” Borusa answered. “No more than I trust any Academician at Prydon. There’s not one of them who wouldn’t trade their House Loom for a professorship or an appointment to the Academy Council.”

“Just generalised distrust, then, sir,” Spandrell noted, “no particular concerns? The other matter relates to Academician Jelpax’s recent expedition with Academician Hedin to the Death Zone.”

Borusa seemed to freeze for the briefest of moments, or perhaps it was a trick of the light. If mention of the Death Zone had in fact produced a reaction in him, he concealed it very well indeed. “Do you think that’s relevant to the case, Castellan?”

“They apparently received authorisation for this venture from the High Council,” Spandrell explained, “but when I attempted to access the details of the particular Council session, I found that my clearance was declined. The only possible reason I would not be cleared to view those records, sir, would be if Intervention Agency business were discussed in them.”

Borusa looked out of the window again. “You know I have no more authority over the Intervention Agency than you do, and I have no personal recollection of any Council discussion relating to Death Zone expeditions, but if you believe the terms of that Council authorisation could have a bearing on your investigation, then I will do my best to get you access to them.”

“Thank you, sir. I will leave you to your duties now.” Spandrell turned to leave.

“Castellan,” Borusa called after him. “Be sure to conduct your inquiries with the utmost care and discretion. I want you to give every aspect your personal supervision.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Remember, Castellan, you’re treading on very dangerous ground here. We all are.”


	3. Chapter 3

When Spandrell emerged from the transmat terminal onto the operations room gantry, Rodan was waiting for him with a pleased expression on her face: “The preliminary technical report on the murder scene is complete,” she announced, as if expecting him to award her a gold star.

“Very good,” said Spandrell, and set off towards his office with her bouncing at his heels.

“And I’ve pulled Academician Jelpax’s data extract as you ordered, Castellan.” Co-ordinator Kelner produced the slim, opalescent cylinder to demonstrate as much as he too hurried over to greet the Castellan.

“See, you are useful for something,” Spandrell muttered, adding more loudly: “Ah, good, Kelner. You can both enlighten me as to what you have learned in the conference chamber. We need to review what progress we have made so far in our inquiries.”

Kelner’s face lit up with feigned enthusiasm: “As you command, Castellan.”

In the operations room below, the daily task of keeping the Citadel safe buzzed on: _All Guards stand to in Sector Ninety-Nine; vandalism in progress…_

Within a few time increments, Spandrell was seated with Rodan and Kelner around the large hexagonal table in the room adjacent to the Castellan’s private office. He decided to get straight down to business:

“Kelner. What biographical gems have you discovered about the unfortunate victim in this case?”

The Co-ordinator inserted the data extract cylinder into the suitably-sized receptacle on the table top in front of him. Instantly, the large display screen at the head of the table was alive with swirling, glowing symbols. If one concentrated upon them, eventually their patterns started to make sense, to coalesce into thoughts and images, although they probably did not reveal as much to an amateur as they would have to one versed in Jelpax’s field of endeavour. Patterns in history had been his speciality, by all accounts.

“Castellan, the witness Academician Hedin mentioned to you that Jelpax had expressed controversial ideas on the subject of applied history.” Kelner was referring to the initial report Spandrell had sent him via comm-ring while still at the scene. “What he did _not_ mention was that his colleague had been censured twice by the Prydon Academy Board of Regents for publishing heterodox opinions. On the second occasion, Hedin spoke in Jelpax’s defence and succeeded in preventing more serious charges from being levelled against him.”

“Our victim was something of a firebrand?” Spandrell was somehow not surprised. Prydonians had a certain reputation, after all.

“It would seem to have been a liveslong affliction, Castellan.” Kelner indicated a particularly bright swirl of data flowing across the screen. “In his acolyte days, he associated with a clique of known troublemakers, at least five of whom later became full-fledged renegades. Hedin also was a member of this group, as were, remarkably, both our current President-elect _and_ the mastermind behind the assassination of his predecessor. As a recently-graduated researcher, Jelpax’s closest academic collaborator was a certain Invigilator Nesbin, who later voluntarily exiled himself to Outer Gallifrey one step ahead of a malfeasance investigation.”

“One of those Outsiders whose existence we don’t admit to,” Spandrell observed. “And these heterodox opinions Jelpax got in trouble over, do we have any concrete examples?”

“A moment, Castellan.” Kelner lapsed into rapt contemplation of the data stream for a few moments. “Ah, yes. It seems he circulated a discussion paper arguing in favour of using TT capsules to study Gallifrey’s relative past and future. Not so much expressing heterodox opinions as inciting the commission of high crimes, if I may venture an opinion.”

“You certainly may, Co-ordinator.” Spandrell pressed the knuckles of his fist against the unyielding table surface. “None of that, however, has any direct relevance that I can see to the _reason_ for the Academician’s murder. Who would kill a man for centuries-old academic misadventures?”

“Well, it does suggest a pattern of behaviour,” Kelner opined. “Academician Jelpax was clearly by nature a reckless and anti-authoritarian individual. I would suggest that such behaviour, even if it mellowed in his later incarnations, did not make his murder _less_ likely.”

“You may have a point,” Spandrell admitted. “Very good, Kelner. A thought has occurred to me; would it be possible to explore the circumstances of Academician Jelpax’s murder via the Matrix? We had some success in that regard during the investigation into the recent Presidential assassination. Wouldn’t Jelpax’s mind print, including his last moments, have been uploaded automatically after his death?”

“Well, there’s a problem there,” Kelner admitted, looking uncomfortable. “I had the same thought as you, but when I tried to access Jelpax’s Matrix ghost via the APC Net, there was some sort of glitch. It appears he hasn’t uploaded yet.”

“A glitch? Can that even happen?” Rodan sounded horrified, as well she might. The Matrix was the only thing even close to an afterlife that Time Lords were supposed to believe in. The idea that something could go wrong with the upload process was a bleak one indeed. 

“In this instance, it has,” said Kelner. “I have my technical staff looking into it; hopefully they can identify the problem and resolve it.”

“Hopefully they can,” Spandrell agreed, rather disturbed himself by the implications of this news. _Permanent death; may the goddess Time protect us_. “Now, Technician Rodan; your preliminary report.”

“At once, Castellan.” She tapped her comm-ring, and its display was projected onto the large screen, replacing Kelner’s data. “As you can see, we completed a thorough scientific scan of the murder scene and its contents. Medical examination of Academician Jelpax’s body is due to take place as soon as the Surgeon General can tear himself away from his private researches.”

“Confine yourself to the facts, Technician,” Spandrell advised, secretly amused by Rodan’s candour.

“Of course, Castellan,” she beamed rather insolently, before consulting the screen again. “In the meantime, our scans all indicated that the most likely cause of death was a staser blast. However, the level of zygma particles at the murder scene was background only. Normally this would suggest that any staser discharge took place much earlier than the point at which Academician Hedin’s statement indicates he received a call from the deceased. Although that’s strange too…”

“What about poison?” Spandrell asked. “Either in the wine, the drinking vessels or the glass shards on the floor?”

“We detected nothing from the standard pharmacopeia.” She tapped again, and a different set of test results appeared on the screen. “With regard to electronic devices, our initial efforts focused on trying to retrieve information on Academician Jelpax’s recent activities from his computer terminal and comm-ring. We discovered, however, that both of them had been subjected to full data-core reformatting at the substrate level before being comprehensively destroyed by blunt force trauma. A stone chip embedded in the computer console, by the way, confirmed the suggestion in your initial report that the academic award recovered from the study floor was the tool utilised in carrying out this destruction.”

“Somebody very much did not want us to recover any data from those devices,” Spandrell cut in.

Rodan nodded at this. “However,” she said, “the only biodata traces we recovered from the award statuette were those of Academician Jelpax himself.”

“Why would he destroy his own computer?” Spandrell wondered. “Did he keep backup files of his latest work?”

“Apparently not,” Rodan responded. “We checked all of those old media devices he had in his study and none of them contained files saved within the past relative year. Whatever he was working on at the time of his death is lost…or stored elsewhere.”

“I see.” Spandrell gravely reviewed the display screen, gloved fingers steepled in front of him. He did not understand yet what all of the evidence was adding up to, he had to concede, but he had an uncomfortable and ominous suspicion that whatever it was there was something very wrong about the death of Academician Jelpax. Perhaps even more wrong than murder itself.

Eventually, his ruminative silence was too much for Kelner: “What are you thinking, Castellan?”

Spandrell let out a weary sigh. “I am thinking that it would be much easier to get to the bottom of this matter if our two main witnesses weren’t lying to us.”

“Lying, Castellan?” The Co-ordinator seemed perplexed. “What leads you to that conclusion?”

Spandrell examined his fingers grimly for a moment before replying. “In the case of the former pupil, Romanadvoratrelundar, her lips.”

Kelner hesitated before replying. “My own fault, no doubt, but I’m failing to follow your chain of logic, Castellan.”

“He means because they were moving,” Rodan surmised. “We Patrexes have a saying about Prydonians; they’re so crooked, they could eat nutri-soup with an auger.”

“My own House is affiliated to that most esteemed Chapter,” Kelner informed her with a sniff of indignation.

Rodan looked at him with wide, delighted eyes: “Oh, _really_?”

“That was not my meaning, Technician,” Spandrell interceded, diplomatically. “Tell me, in your search of the murder scene and surroundings, did you find a right hand glove, white leather, made for a Time Lady?”

“No, Castellan,” she confirmed. “The only gloves we turned up were the ones on the table near the body, and the biodata recovered indicates those belonged to the victim.”

“Interesting…”

“And as for how we know the learned Academician Hedin was fibbing,” Rodan continued, “our data traffic analysis clearly indicates that _no_ call was placed from Jelpax’s comm-ring or computer terminal during the present timeband, to Hedin or anybody else.” 

“And yet he claims to have been summoned to the dead man’s study,” Spandrell recalled, “by the dead man.”

“When perhaps really he’d already killed him,” Rodan theorised, “and then gone back to his own rooms to wait for the alarm to be raised so he could rush to the scene and look like an innocent bystander?”

“Hedin told me that he was in a tutorial with an acolyte at the time of the murder,” Spandrell recalled. “Is there any way we could confirm that?”

“We’d need to ask the authorities at Prydon Academy,” Rodan pointed out, “and from what Lord Zorac has just been saying about you on the PR report, I’m not sure they’d be very co-operative.”

Spandrell was not surprised to hear about the Lord Rector’s anger. He was sure Borusa had done his best to stoke it up. “Neither am I.”

Kelner ignored all this bold talk, scanning the technical report on the display screen, obviously searching for a more acceptable explanation. “According to this, the desktop transmat had been activated at some point shortly before being destroyed,” he pointed out. “Perhaps Academician Jelpax sent a message cylinder to Hedin rather than placing a voice call.”

“That is not what Hedin said to me,” said Spandrell. “He said “Jelpax called me and asked me to come to his study at once.” A _call_ , Kelner. Not a message, a call. If he did indeed receive a message cylinder, that is not what he said, and I do not think I would expect a fellow of the faculty of Prydon Academy to be so imprecise in his choice of words.”

As was sometimes the case with Kelner, Spandrell saw the usual carefully-maintained mask of obsequiousness slip for a moment, the Co-ordinator’s inner resentment and anger written plainly on his face for the briefest of instants. Then, the obsequiousness won out. Kelner stretched his mouth in a wide, insincere smile, slowly and carefully as if the effort hurt him: “As you say, Castellan.” He fell silent for a moment before speaking again. “If pressed to offer a hypothesis at this point, however, I would be forced to say that the Shobogan gardener is the most likely suspect in this case.”

“And what would make you say that?” Rodan demanded of him.

“Do you really see a Time Lady such as this Romanadvoratrelundar or an Academician like Hedin committing a ghastly crime such as this?” Kelner asked. “What possible reason would they have? There’s no logic to it.”

“The only murders I’ve had to investigate in the Citadel in my career as Castellan were all committed by noble Time Lords,” Spandrell reminded him. “Including the assassination of the last Lord President.”

Rodan, too, remained unconvinced by Kelner’s theory: “And even if he wanted to kill Jelpax for…some _reason_ …where would a Shobogan come by a staser?”

“I’m reliably informed you can barter for one on any corner in Low Town,” the Co-ordinator claimed. “The place is a lawless warren where Guardsmen fear for their lives.”

Rodan was visibly incensed by this assertion: “In Low Town, the locals have far more reason to fear the Guards than the other way around. I could give you statistics on beatings and shootings…”

“It’s still true, unfortunately, Co-ordinator,” Spandrell agreed. “In spite of my best efforts during my tenure to stamp out such excesses.”

“And yet nothing like that seems to happen to the Academy acolytes who sneak outside the dome to go carousing there,” said Rodan.

Spandrell nodded sadly. “You see, Shobogans have no Provosts or Proctors to shield them from the law.” Privately, he counted his vain attempts to enforce higher standards on those Guards posted outside the Citadel walls as his greatest failure during his time as Castellan. For every bad apple one discarded, two more seemed to appear. Hopefully new young Commanders like Andred would help make a difference in that regard.

The Castellan’s seditious words appeared to fall on deaf ears where Kelner was concerned. He was too busy spinning his theory of Jelpax’s death: “Likely, this…Gilbas killed the Academician for the unusual pendant that is listed as missing. They’re attracted to such trinkets, Shobogans; they exchange them for goods and services in their own savage communities.”

“Do you still need me, Castellan?” asked Rodan, rising to her feet. She eyed Kelner pointedly. “I need some fresh air; there’s an unpleasant smell in here.”

Spandrell waved her out. “Go, go.”

“Insolent young upstart,” Kelner fumed when she was gone. “I’ll have her reassigned to…to _space traffic control_!”

“I make all personnel decisions in this office, Co-ordinator,” Spandrell said frostily as he too rose from the table. “Don’t worry, next time I speak with the Lord Chancellor I will be sure to share your theory of the crime with him.” His comm-ring buzzed. He shook his head slowly as he went to answer it. “ _Goods and services_ …”

His caller, he discovered, was Andred: “Castellan.” 

“Ah, Commander. I hope you’re going to inform me of some resounding success on the part of the Guard.”

“Well, sir, one of our sensor drones detected a biodata print from the gardener Gilbas; we’ve managed to triangulate his position to a specific area of Low Town and I’m just about to send in my Guards to search for him house to house. I thought you’d want to know, sir.”

“Excellent news, Commander.” Spandrell made the effort to give Andred an encouraging smile. “I’ll be on the scene myself as soon as possible.”

“Yes sir.”

“You’re going to _Low Town_?” Kelner asked incredulously as Spandrell terminated the call. “In person?”

“Yes I am,” he replied. “Lord Borusa commanded me to supervise every aspect of this investigation personally, and who am I to disobey the Lord Chancellor-elect?”

“Really, Castellan, are you sure it’s safe?”

Spandrell gave the Co-ordinator a wry glance, trying not to think of zygma particles and Matrix glitches: “Tell me, Kelner, do you want to live forever?”

* * *

There were no transmat booths in Low Town. When Spandrell stepped out of the lift onto the landing pad high above the Capitol, the gunship was already waiting for him like some monstrously bloated predatory flutterwing. Its brightly-glowing anti-grav motors whined on the very edge of hearing.

“You’ll have to strap in, Castellan,” advised the red-uniformed crew chief as Spandrell climbed into the spacious passenger compartment behind the cockpit, the doors sliding shut on both sides of him. Then, with a lurch, the gunship rose into the air, leaving Spandrell’s stomach somewhere on the landing pad.

He was not sure whether he preferred this or transmat travel.

From the window, he saw the spires and pinnacles of the Citadel drop away. Night was drawing in now, the sky’s light fading to a sullen red-orange furnace glow, and the towers seemed to sink into shadow; only thin traceries of yellow light revealed the outline of public spaces and thoroughfares far below. Over to his right, the Panopticon emitted a great column of illumination, reflected back from the dome above. The workers repairing it laboured day and night.

Spandrell pressed himself back into the well-padded seat and tensely raised his comm-ring to his mouth: “Andred, report.”

“Search in progress, sir,” came the reply. “We haven’t found him yet, but he won’t get past the cordon.”

“Good. I’ll be there in a few increments.”

Returning his attention to the windows, Spandrell realised that the craft was heading directly for the great crack that marred the dome, its broken edges barely visible as they caught the Panopticon’s light. He supposed it was a more direct route than the purpose-built sally-ports, but still represented a considerable deviation from safe flying rules on the part of the pilot. Even as the gunship drew closer to it, the crack still appeared awfully narrow from Spandrell’s viewpoint, and the edges seemed awfully close on either side as the craft slipped through.

“Plenty of room, Castellan,” the crew chief claimed with a smile from her seat at the front of the cabin.

As the gunship emerged from the dome, it emerged from the artificial twilight of the Citadel’s lights into the darkness of the Outland. A red-black sea seemed to stretch away endlessly in all directions, lapping against the Citadel’s great encompassing wall. The sky’s glow was too dim now to give any real illumination apart from a sickly suggestion of seeing everything below through a film of blood. Only the odd twinkling star in the void showed the location of a far-flung noble House here, a Shobogan village clinging to life over there. These were the Dry-Lands, the Citadel’s sparsely-inhabited rural hinterland. The edge of the true Outer Gallifrey – the wasteland between the Citadel and Arcadia with its even more thinly-spread population of dirt-poor artesian farmers and wandering tribes of self-appointed exiles – was barely visible even from this height. No stars twinkled there.

And then the gunship crested one of the rock spurs that radiated from the Citadel’s great plateau like spokes, and Low Town came into view.

At first, it was no more than a faintly less-dark stain against the darkness below the plateau’s edge. As the craft whined closer, the stain resolved into a chaotic sprawl of improvised buildings. Wood and stone and mud-brick dwelling-places of every shape and size, illuminated sporadically by jury-rigged lighting, nested close to the base of the Citadel wall like a fungal infection. Nobody had planned it, there was no formal scheme of streets and sectors; it had grown naturally over the space of millennia as the Citadel itself grew and prospered and more and more inhabitants of the Outland had flocked there looking for work and opportunities. 

Eventually the newcomers had filled all of the unused space within the great wall and spilled outside it, covering the slopes with their shanty-settlements. In time, the settlements had merged into the current single vast conurbation, and gained a name; _Low Town_. 

And the Citadel’s longer-established and better-heeled inhabitants had given the immigrant caste who swept their corridors, tended their gardens and maintained their machines a name drawn from the Old High Gallifreyan dialect of Rassilon’s era. A pejorative term, dismissive, a slur; _Shobogans_.

Kelner had been half-right about the place, but only half. Low Town had little time for the laws of the Citadel, and its inhabitants had few reasons to love the Guards, but for centuries now it had been far from the lawless wilderness Time Lords generally imagined it to be. The Shobogans had organised themselves, made their own unwritten laws and informally enforced them, as much out of necessity as any sense of defiance. The rulers of the Citadel, after all, had made it their business to concern themselves with those who lived Outside as little as possible; they only worried about keeping the peace there when it somehow affected the higher social orders.

Like now. Even before Jelpax’s murder, the Guards had increasingly been venturing beyond the wall in force, quelling waves of unrest and endearing themselves to the Shobogans less every time. The Eye of Harmony had done it, making half the Shobogans within the Citadel homeless at a stroke. Low Town was overcrowded now, increasingly anarchic. It would take very little to set the whole place ablaze, and perhaps the Citadel with it. 

And Spandrell, as much as he might side with the downtrodden by instinct, was the man charged by the High Council with preventing just that. Perhaps not for much longer, he thought. He had discovered his conscience late in his lives, but now it caused him nothing but grief. Perhaps when this case was solved…

As the gunship came in to land, he checked and rechecked the slim silver staser pistol he had drawn from the Guard armoury, then secreted it inside his robes. He would not hesitate to use it if necessary.

The pilot set down in a clear space near the edge of the sprawl, the anti-grav causing dust to billow in strange eddies around the descending craft, temporarily obscuring the view. When the dust cleared, Spandrell saw Andred hurrying towards the gunship at the head of a squad of Guardsmen.

“Castellan,” he greeted Spandrell as he helped him down from the gunship’s open door. It was cold tonight, out here, the Castellan realised. It was never really cold in the Citadel. “We’ve just had a report that Gilbas has been sighted entering a nearby Shobogan drinking establishment,” Andred reported. “We’re about to go in and secure him.”

“Well, don’t let me slow you down,” Spandrell told him, doing his best to keep up with the long-legged Commander and his men as they double-timed from the landing ground to the nearest row of ramshackle buildings. There were more Guards there already, arrayed in a cordon of red and white. Spandrell saw they were equipped with silver body-armour and shoulder-high shock-staffs. Equipped for a riot.

“Stand to, men,” Andred ordered as he drew up to the cordon. “Hold the line; shoulder to shoulder, not one step back! Castellan, next to me in the centre. Men; the Castellan is to be protected at all costs!”

The whole line set off again, Spandrell finding himself surrounded by towering Guardsmen as they jogged through the spaces between the buildings, forming up again in the narrow street on the other side. The road surface was packed soil, churned by many feet, a broad stream of filthy water flowing down its centre. The Guards pushed their way through the plainly-dressed passers-by who milled about, heading towards an unusually large and well-lit building on the other side of the thoroughfare, clearing a space in front of it. A picture-sign hung above the door of the place, portraying a cartoonishly-drawn flutterwing wearing a Time Lord’s ceremonial collar. Voices and music as well as warm orange light flowed from the gaps in its window-shutters.

“Second and third squads, I want the street blocked in both directions!” Andred ordered. “First squad with me, through the front door!”

Spandrell looked to his left and right as two parallel lines of Guards formed across the street, creating a corridor for Andred’s approach to the drinking-house. As they pushed the onlookers back in both directions, and as more of the locals streamed in from every alleyway and building around to see what was happening, the crowd on both sides grew larger and more vocal. All Shobogans, as far as he could see, of all ages and genders. This particular part of Low Town, with its accumulation of taverns, gambling dens and houses of ill-repute, was normally crawling with Academy acolytes who had sneaked out of the traditionally unguarded Low Postern for a spot of illicit amusement. A blind eye was turned, by long-standing custom, by both Guards and Proctors. Not tonight; all the gates, even that one, were locked down as part of the search for Gilbas.

“What you lot doing here?” somebody shouted in the crowd, answered by a chorus of raucous agreement from many of those standing there:

“Red-tops, always down here pushing us around!”

“Leave us alone!”

“Spack off back to the Citadel, red-tops!”

“You don’t belong down here!”

“Spacking red-tops!”

Spandrell was looking to his left when the first gob of mud flew over his head from the right, striking one of the Guards surrounding him on the crest of his helmet.

“Stand fast, men!” Andred bellowed as more mud, and stones, and anything else that the crowd members could find, started raining down from both directions. The nearest line of Guardsmen took a collective backwards step as the press of people on that side started to push back, but managed to hold steady. More insults and missiles followed unrelentingly.

Andred dropped his voice: “I think you should go back to the gunship, Castellan.”

“And leave you and your men to risk yourselves in my place?” Spandrell glanced behind him. “Besides, the crowd are cutting off our line of retreat. It’s forward or nothing.”

“Let’s make it quick, then,” Andred decided, drawing his staser and a biodata tracker from his belt as the crowd on the right hand side now surged forward, the Guards barely holding them back. One of those standing with Andred was hit in the face by a hurled stone, losing his helmet and collapsing with a cry, one of his comrades instantly crouching to offer him assistance. “With me!” the Commander shouted.

Spandrell stayed close, at the centre of Andred’s phalanx of Guards as they rushed the front entrance of the drinking house with the Commander at their head. The volume of the crowd only increased; one of the Guardsmen barring the road shouted in alarm but Spandrell had no time to see what had happened to him.

Andred kicked the door wide open, eliciting a blast of heat and noise as the Guards piled into the crowded, smoky interior of the tavern.

“Gilbas! We’re looking for Gilbas!” Andred called out as the tracker in his hand started to squeal. “None of the rest of you have any cause for alarm!”

And then chaos erupted.

The drinking-house clientele started to rush in all directions at once. Some fled, others wanted to fight. Furniture and tankards hurtled through the air, tables toppled over, Guardsmen hit customers and customers punched Guardsmen. Andred fired a staser bolt into the ceiling, succeeding only in dislodging a very small chunk of plaster that Spandrell had to jump aside to avoid. An angry Shobogan swung a large candlestick at the Castellan’s head and Spandrell rather inelegantly shoved him to the sawdust-strewn floor.

“That way!” Andred pointed the tracker towards the back of the room, where half a dozen people were trying to push through a rear door, and its squeal became a tooth-rattling scream. “He’s over there!” Then somebody smashed a bottle over his head.

Spandrell moved forward through a temporary gap in the melee, fighting still continuing on all sides, and outside too by the sound of it.

“Gilbas!” he shouted, reaching for his staser as he approached the last few customers attempting to leave through the back of the house. One glanced instinctively over his shoulder at hearing the name, a large, red-faced man. “You’re Gilbas?” Spandrell asked, and the man bolted, pushing another two or three people aside in his haste to exit. “Out of my way!” Spandrell ordered, pulling the staser as he tried to chase the fleeing man. The sight of the weapon miraculously cleared a path through the crowd and Spandrell dashed through the door into the night.

Behind the drinking-house was a narrow alley that, from the smell, doubled as the establishment’s latrine. There were fugitive drinkers fleeing in both directions, but Spandrell spotted the red-faced man disappearing around a corner to his left and took off in pursuit.

This body was no more made for running than the ankle-length robes he was wearing. Within a few dozen paces, Spandrell was struggling to draw breath while his hearts pounded inside his chest. He staggered around the corner, staser leading the way, and found a dead end with Gilbas, if it really were him, struggling to scale the wall at the far end.

Spandrell walked up behind him, panting: “We just want to talk to you about what happened at the Academy today.” 

Gilbas grunted with effort as he tried, and failed, again to scramble over the wall: “Spack off, red-top!”

Spandrell reached out with his free hand and seized one of the man’s scrabbling legs, pulling hard. Gilbas fell off the wall, landing in a crouch, and came up swinging.

His first punch knocked the staser flying from Spandrell’s grip; the second sent him reeling back into one of the alley walls, momentarily stunned. Gilbas was clutching something in his hand, he realised, something metallic, using it almost as a knuckle-duster to add weight to his blows. 

Spandrell recovered in time to catch the Shobogan’s third punch in his open hand, and twist the arm back far enough to produce a yelp of pain. Gilbas responded with a clumsy kick to the knee, and then another blow to the face that sent Spandrell to the ground. Pain exploded through his brain, a cascade of lights bursting before his eyes as he felt cold dirt against his cheek. His vision cleared in time to see Gilbas standing over him, the dropped staser now clutched uncertainly in his hand.

“I didn’t do anything, right?” the gardener wanted him to know. Spandrell again saw metal glinting between the fingers of the hand not holding the staser. “I saw that Time Lady come running out of old Jelpax’s place screaming he was dead, so I just went in to see what happened to him. He was all right, Jelpax; didn’t look at me like I was dirt, not like those other big nobs up there. I didn’t do anything to him! All I did was…”

The staser flash lit up the alleyway like a falling star. Spandrell flinched.

_I’m not ready to die. Not like this…_

Gilbas gave a choked cry and fell sideways, dead before he hit the ground. Spandrell lay staring at the dully incandescent sky above, still not understanding what was happening.

“Castellan, are you all right?” Andred appeared, looking down, his own staser still glowing with heat from its discharge. He was missing his helmet and sported a large graze across his forehead.

“You killed him, you fool!” Spandrell shouted accusingly as the Commander reached down and hauled him to his feet. “I wanted him alive!”

Andred seemed rather aggrieved by this reaction: “He was about to finish you off, sir! If I hadn’t…”

Spandrell brushed himself off, looking down at the dead Shobogan. The zygma radiation was already working on the body, Gilbas’s skin discolouring and shrivelling before the Castellan’s eyes, bones making tiny popping sounds as the limbs began to contract. Spandrell caught his breath, trying to calm himself. “I know, Commander,” he said quietly. “My apologies; I spoke to you inappropriately.”

Andred nodded, holstering the staser as it finally cooled sufficiently. “No need, Castellan. It’s forgotten already. Now, are you all right?”

“I’ll live. How are your men?”

“I called in a gunship for backup,” Andred explained. “That set the crowd running, although I think we should hurry back to the landing zone before they decide to return. We made a couple of dozen arrests, some cuts and bruises but no fatalities on either side.” He paused. “Well, apart from this poor fellow.” He looked down at the body regretfully. “Once word of this gets around, Low Town is going to explode. We need to get out of here, now sir.”

“Just a moment.” Spandrell stooped over the corpse. “There’s something I need to see.” He prised his staser from the dead man’s hand and returned it to his pocket, then examined the other hand. The wizened fingers crackled and snapped as he opened them to look at the metallic object he had noticed Gilbas holding.

_The pendant. He found Jelpax lying dead in his study and that rare pendant was just too much of a temptation… Goods and services!_

He finally succeeded in freeing the object from the man’s death-grip and held it in his own palm for a moment, staring at it in dull surprise.

Finally, Spandrell blinked, not sure whether this was good news or bad news for the investigation, nor what Lord Borusa was going to say when he brought _this_ to his attention.

Not the pendant. 

For a moment, he was standing in the hexangle of the Academy Annexe again, among the carrion-bushes.

_Hedin absently picked at a loose thread…_

The object Gilbas had been clutching so tightly was in fact a gleaming golden starburst.


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m not sure exactly what killed this man, Castellan,” said Surgeon General Gomer, “but it wasn’t a staser bolt.”

“Well, it certainly looks like the result of a staser bolt,” Kelner replied.

“I was unaware you were a medical man, you vulgar little yoik.” Gomer gave the Co-ordinator a glance of pure contempt. “I was talking to the organ-grinder, anyway, not his trained tafelshrew.”

“So what did kill him?” Spandrell asked, trying to ignore Kelner’s expression of barely-contained rage.

They were standing in the dimly-lit crypt far beneath the Panopticon, where Time Lords were laid out for the funerary rites. Gilbas’s mortal remains had been filed away in the public necropolis for later recycling; what was left of Jelpax, by contrast, had been reverently placed here upon a basalt slab, ready for the Surgeon General’s attention.

“That’s an excellent question,” Gomer noted, bending over the blackened corpse in his long yellow gown. “It _does_ closely resemble a staser death,” he conceded, with another deliberate glance in Kelner’s direction, “to somebody with no medical knowledge, but a full examination shows no burn-mark where the bolt could have entered the body, which when taken with the apparent lack of zygma particles detected at the scene pretty much rules stasers out entirely. Plus, when you’ve seen a staser death before, as we both have Castellan, and know what to look for, this really isn’t all _that_ similar.”

“I’ll take your expert opinion on that, my Lord,” Spandrell assured him.

Gomer frowned in thought as he continued: “As far as I can see, Academician Jelpax died after entering a regenerative state, which was then aborted before his mind and body could reconstruct themselves. Very unpleasant indeed. I’ve seen something like this once before; old Lord Salagon who died of Spincex Syndrome, a very rare and incurable condition caused by a biodata defect. This is something similar to that. Not exactly the same, but similar.”

“And would this account for the fact that his mind print was not uploaded to the APC Net after death?” Spandrell asked.

Gomer nodded. “I would say so. The APC Net would automatically reject corrupted biodata in order to avoid infecting the whole Matrix.”

Spandrell thought about that very carefully.

_I deal in biodata, you see…_

“And how would this have been done to the victim?” he asked.

“Some sort of tailor-made biodata virus,” Gomer answered. “You could inject it, or maybe even introduce it in food or drink. No way of verifying that, unfortunately; any injection marks or stomach contents were destroyed when the body broke down. And it might not show up on any other tests, because a real biodata expert could set it to erase itself from the timeline once its work was done. If you’re willing to commit murder, why stint on creating a little paradox while you’re at it?”

_I deal in biodata…_

“Thank you, Surgeon General,” said Spandrell. “That will be all.”

“Good luck, Castellan,” Gomer replied. “This was…it wasn’t just murder. There isn’t a word for what this is. Whoever did this didn’t just want to kill Jelpax, they wanted to destroy him utterly, to destroy everything he was and had been, everything he knew. This monster needs to be caught.”

“He already has been,” Kelner said bitterly when Gomer had left. “And nobody speaks to me like that, Surgeon General or not.”

Spandrell looked at him. “You mean the Shobogan Gilbas?”

“It was a staser,” Kelner insisted, glancing at Jelpax’s corpse as the mortuary attendants came to minister to it. “You only need to look at it to see that, whatever nonsense Gomer may invent.”

“He _is_ the Surgeon General, Co-ordinator.”

“It was the Shobogan,” said Kelner, “and I said as much to the Lord Chancellor.”

“You did _what_?” Spandrell was as stunned as he had been when Gilbas punched him.

“He called asking for an update while you were running around Low Town. I told him we had the murderer in hand.”

“You had no authority to do that,” Spandrell told him. “What were you thinking?”

“In some ways it is the _simplest_ solution,” said Kelner, “as well as being the right one.” Spandrell could not tell whether he believed what he was saying or not. He was only just starting to understand Kelner fully. The man would do or say whatever was best for Kelner, without compunction.

“We will have a very long conversation in the next timeband,” Spandrell decided, unsmilingly. “And when we have had it, you may wish to reconsider your career options, Co-ordinator.”

Kelner’s face fell, his natural cowardice and sense of self-preservation asserting themselves: “Castellan, please, I meant no…”

“Later, Kelner. Now I need to report to the Lord Chancellor myself. According to the last PR bulletin, half of Low Town is currently in flames. The Guards had to repel an attempt by rioters to breach the Arcadian Gate! Who knows, though; Lord Borusa may even agree with your theory. He likes to keep things _simple_.”

* * *

Borusa finished reading Spandrell’s report and carefully closed his computer terminal. He got up to look out of the window just as he had at their last meeting, remaining silent for what seemed an age before finally speaking:

“So you disagree with Co-ordinator Kelner as to the most likely culprit for Jelpax’s murder?”

“I do, my Lord.” Spandrell remained where he was, standing on the other side of the Chancellor’s desk.

“Co-ordinator Kelner is…very efficient, isn’t he?” Borusa observed.

“I have heard him called that, my Lord.”

Borusa turned to face him. “ _Hedin_?” He sounded as if he were having some trouble believing it.

Spandrell decided that, as far as this case was concerned, the time for diplomacy was past: “I believe that Academician Hedin murdered Academician Jelpax, yes sir.”

Borusa considered that statement before replying. He did not appear to be enjoying the idea. “As I used to say when debating with my acolytes, you may well believe it but where is your _evidence_?”

“I have the clothing decoration recovered from the man Gilbas; it matches the ones I saw on Academician Hedin’s gown. Gilbas must have picked it up at the murder scene.”

“Not necessarily,” Borusa countered. “He worked in the Academy gardens; Hedin passes through there every day. He could have lost the item in question at any time. He could even have lost it in Jelpax’s rooms before the murder took place; they were colleagues, after all.”

“I also have the Surgeon General’s report stating that Academician Jelpax’s murderer must have been an expert in biodata applications.”

“And so are half the scientists in the Academy,” was Borusa's riposte.

“It’s enough evidence for you to order Academician Hedin be put to the Mind Probe,” Spandrell said. “There is legal precedent; I can cite cases if necessary.”

“The _Mind Probe_?” Borusa slowly returned to his seat and sat down heavily. “I don’t think you quite realise, Castellan, how serious a suggestion that is.”

Spandrell knew perfectly well how serious it was. “If more proof is needed, there is the fact that Academician Hedin lied to me in an official statement. He stated that he had received a call from Jelpax before his death asking him to come to his rooms, but we can prove that Jelpax made no such call.”

Borusa’s forehead furrowed unhappily. “And why would a brilliant scholar like Hedin, having decided to murder his colleague and presumably put considerable planning into it…why would he engage in such an easily disproven lie? Whatever else he may be, he certainly isn’t stupid.”

“Arrogance?” Spandrell suggested. “Fear? Loss of composure? He has almost certainly never committed a murder before, after all. Underestimation of our investigative abilities or ignorance of our forensic techniques? These are quite specialised fields and also ones that many Academicians would consider unworthy of their time and effort. Perhaps he has the self-confidence to lie to my face because he believes my office would never be allowed to prosecute such a highly-regarded Academician and Prydonian.” Spandrell took a deep breath: “Is that in fact what is happening here, my Lord?”

“Don’t test me, Castellan,” Borusa warned him. “What I said about Gallifrey needing you, I meant that, but nobody is indispensable.”

 _Nobody except you, evidently_.

“You also said that you wanted me to cause trouble,” Spandrell reminded him.

Borusa gave a bitter laugh. “I did, rather unwisely with hindsight, and you certainly have excelled yourself.”

Spandrell tried a different approach: “You told me that it would be to your advantage to be seen antagonising your own Chapter, that it would disarm your enemies on the High Council. Hedin is a Prydonian.”

“Yes,” Borusa allowed, “but when I said that I was talking about having a public spat with that dolt Zorac, which I have now had. And it has indeed bought me some more time. However, putting a highly-respected and well-connected Academician to the Mind Probe… It wouldn’t matter what Chapter he is from, it would unite the whole Council against me, and against you too. Whatever his indiscretions in his youth, Hedin is a renowned man of learning, widely spoken of as future Councillor material. There are some things that the noble Lords and Ladies simply will not stand for. Not until I’m a sight more secure in my office, anyway.” He frowned again. “Kelner’s a lickspittle, but he did get one thing right. It would be, as he told you, much _simpler_ if the Shobogan had done it. He’s already dead for one thing, and he was…well, a Shobogan.”

“My Lord,” said Spandrell, “Low Town is burning as we speak. If my office blames a Shobogan for this murder, one who was killed by the Chancellery Guard, it is only going to exacerbate that situation…”

“Whereas the High Council and the Chapters would be willing to accept it without question. It is the kind of thing they are inclined to believe Shobogans do. It would just be a senseless tragedy with no sinister implications or political dimension.” Borusa adopted a more conciliatory tone: “Castellan, the Shobogans are going to riot whatever happens, until I manage to sort out the accommodation problem and food shortages. And that isn’t going to happen if the Arcalians manage to oust me by getting a Scendle elected Lord President. If the Council can be persuaded a Shobogan was the culprit, they might even be persuaded to vote through an authorisation for you to recruit more Guards. Appeals to law and order always win them over.”

“My Lord Chancellor-elect,” said Spandrell, very precisely. “I want to be very clear about this. Are you ordering me to discontinue the investigation of Academician Hedin?”

Borusa actually smiled. “Of course not, Castellan. I would never give such an order. I know you are a man of integrity…and yet also a man of wisdom. I find the two do not go together as often as one might imagine. You will do what is best for Gallifrey, I am sure, whatever orders I may or may not issue.”

Spandrell found himself unable to suppress a weary sigh, even as he inclined his head in acknowledgment: “I see, my Lord.”

“As to the investigation,” Borusa went on, “I’m not telling you it can’t continue. One day, when the political climate is more favourable, it may be that new evidence comes to light, that a grave miscarriage of justice can finally be overturned. Do you understand?”

“I think I do, my Lord.”

“Have you ever tried to catch a gumblejack, Castellan? You can’t just reel them in, you have to give them their head, play them a while. So it is with criminals like Hedin. I did manage to get a glimpse at those sealed High Council records you mentioned. No detail, unfortunately, but it seems that you were correct. Academicians Jelpax and Hedin’s expedition to the Death Zone was indeed sponsored by the Intervention Agency. Criminal justice aside, I would very much like to know why. Wouldn’t you?”

Spandrell remained noncommittal: “I confine myself to criminal justice, my Lord.”

“It goes towards motive,” Borusa insisted. “Maybe you can prove Hedin killed his colleague of many years, but _why_ did he do it? You can’t tell me that, can you?”

“Professional rivalry?” Spandrell speculated.

“If that were grounds for murder,” Borusa retorted, “the Academies and the Capitol would be littered with corpses. I don’t know about you, but the way Jelpax’s computer files were so thoroughly destroyed, the fact that a murder weapon was used that would be sure to prevent his knowledge from uploading to the Matrix after death… I have a feeling this murder was motivated by something he knew, something somebody – the Interventionists, perhaps? – needed suppressed.”

“I think you may be right, my Lord,” Spandrell agreed. “And I think that knowledge may have been something he learned in the Death Zone.”

“And of course, if I could demonstrate to the Interventionists that I had incontestable evidence of their culpability in such a serious crime, then they might find it very hard to deny me anything I asked of them.” Borusa seemed pleased by this notion.

Spandrell held his tongue. _So_ that _is why you’re really interested in Hedin’s motive, my Lord_.

“Then we are agreed,” Borusa announced, contentedly. “I will expect an official announcement of the Shobogan’s responsibility for the Jelpax murder to be promulgated in the next timeband.”

“His name was Gilbas,” Spandrell said.

“Of course it was. And then, Castellan, go and find out what really happened and why. Serve me up Hedin, and the Intervention Agency too if you can. Serve them up to me on a silver paten and you can have a place at the feast as well.”

“My Lord.” Spandrell bowed and hastily retreated from Borusa’s presence. He did not trust himself to keep his composure or his temper a moment longer.

He was still standing in the antechamber, watching the flickering red glow over Low Town from the windows and trying to swallow his rage and disgust, when his comm-ring buzzed unexpectedly. He groaned, expecting it to be Kelner, but a quite different face appeared upon the screen when he activated it.

“My Lord Castellan,” said the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, anxiously. “I got your comm co-ordinates from the Capitol directory. I can’t explain why, but I need you to meet me in Low Town at once.”

* * *

There were even Guards at the Low Postern. All gates were still in lockdown, and since the rioting had begun all sentry details had been doubled. There were at least twenty men in red, armoured and armed with staser rifles, standing watch as Spandrell approached. Even with the rough labourer’s clothing he had obtained before venturing out tonight, their leader recognised him at once.

“Castellan, we’re not letting anybody in or out. It’s madness out there.”

“I am well aware of that,” he replied. “I am on official business. Stand aside and I’ll take my chances.”

The man hesitated: “Castellan…”

“That was an order, Guard leader. Stand aside!”

The Guards obeyed, but the way they looked at him as he passed out of the gate and into the Outland suggested that they thought he had lost his mind. He was not even completely sure that they were wrong. He had no idea how, or why, Romanadvoratrelundar had managed to get out of the Citadel under current conditions, and he had no idea whether he would manage to find her and return alive, but there had been something about her tone, her worried expression. He knew that she must have had a very good reason for calling him, one relevant to the truth behind Jelpax’s death. The chances of him refusing her summons had been precisely nil.

Fortunately, the main disturbances were concentrated in the entertainments district, some distance from the location the Time Lady had specified. Even Low Town had a less affluent quarter, where the houses were little better than plank shacks scattered along a series of dirt tracks, about as far from the Citadel as it was possible to get without straying into the Dry-Lands proper. It was a long walk, but he saw few people given the excitement on the other side of town. The ones who did encounter him on his journey seemed thoroughly convinced by his disguise.

Eventually, he came to it; a shack just like the others, faint lamplight shining dimly through the gaps between its boards. Hardly the sort of place he ever would have imagined finding somebody like the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar. He cautiously drew his staser and faced the rough door for a moment before knocking. Three times, a pause, and then twice, just as she had instructed.

The door opened a crack. “Castellan?” He saw one of her eyes, half her face, and lowered his weapon. She confirmed that it was him and then opened the door wide, all but bundling him inside and then bolting it firmly behind him.

The shack’s cramped interior was scarcely more prepossessing than its exterior. There had been some effort made to render it homely; a rustic rug thrown on the packed dirt floor, a pile of furs and blankets in one corner to serve as a bed, four plain chairs arranged around a simple table where a bottle of wine and some cups stood ready for use. The lamp hung from a hook mounted on one of the low roof beams, its wick sputtering as the door opened and closed, making their shadows leap and dance wildly across the wooden walls. Opposite the entrance, above the makeshift bed, there was a wall-mounted cupboard, its doors closed.

“My Lady,” said Spandrell, “what are you doing here? It isn’t safe out tonight. How did you even get out of the Citadel? Even the Low Postern is guarded.”

“The Low Postern is just the way out people like you know about,” she replied. “You’d be surprised at some of the things acolytes know that you don’t.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” he agreed. He looked around again at the furniture, the bed, the wine.

“And in any case I’m a lot more resourceful than you might think,” she claimed.

There was something about her, he thought, that suggested this was also likely the case. “What is this place?”

“What does it look like?” She was not wearing any cosmetics, and was wearing not a fine gown but instead a ragged dress secured with a rope belt, rough-hewn wooden clogs upon her feet. Her hair hung in an unfussy braid rather than being arranged in some elaborate coiffure. If he had been somebody who noticed such things, he would have conceded that she did not look any less beautiful than she had in her finery. “Jelpax kept this place,” she said. “He liked to get out of the Academy, out of the Citadel, sometimes. He could meet here with his friends, away from prying eyes and gossip. Friends from the inside…and friends from the Outside too.”

“These friends he supposedly didn’t have,” Spandrell observed.

She gave him a sardonic half-smile: “Exactly. Jelpax was a man with a lot of secrets. A brilliant one too.”

“Did he work for the Intervention Agency?” Spandrell decided to throw the question at her, hoping it would throw her off balance. If it did, she showed no sign.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but if he did, I don’t think I’d be in the least bit surprised. That’s the sort of man he was.” When she spoke of the dead man without the guardedness she had affected during their earlier interview, she seemed almost in awe of him, or certainly full of affection. There was a light in her eyes that conveyed more than her words could.

“And you were one of his friends,” he said. It was not a question. He did indeed know exactly what sort of place this was. He looked at the bed yet again, at the wine. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

“Castellan,” she said as she sat on one of the chairs around the table, “I need to explain something to you first.”

He seated himself opposite her, placed the staser very carefully upon the table between them with the grip towards him. “What, that you lied to me about your movements leading to the discovery of Jelpax’s body?”

She did not answer the question directly, instead staring at the lamp for a moment and then beginning to speak. Now, he heard a sadness in her tone: “You’ve been in office so long you don’t remember what it’s like, in the Academy, in the Houses. It’s why Jelpax needed a place like this. And for somebody my age, it’s even worse. The competitiveness between the newly graduated acolytes; by itself, a triple First isn’t enough to get ahead, not the way people watch each other for weakness. All of that spite and envy; any whiff of scandal …”

“I would think that finding a murdered Academician within the bounds of the Academy would be quite scandalous enough,” Spandrell answered, “without making yourself a suspect by giving false evidence to my office.”

Romanadvoratrelundar arched one eyebrow, still perfectly shaped even without makeup. “A _suspect_? Now really…”

Spandrell shrugged. “What other conclusion am I to draw from your conduct? You were in close proximity to the victim both before and after his death. You were clearly involved in some form of…irregular relationship with him…”

“Castellan, I think that you have a wholly erroneous conception of my relationship with Academician Jelpax.”

“No doubt I do, my lady. As I said to you before, my duties rarely bring me into professional contact with the more elevated social strata. Nevertheless, you were taking wine with him in his private study shortly before his murder, a fact which you concealed from me when I interviewed you at the scene.”

“And how do you know that?” she asked, frowning, curious in spite of herself.

“The glass fragments on the study floor,” he replied. “One retained a pink waxy residue. The same exact shade as your lips were painted earlier today, unless I am very much mistaken.”

“Oh.” She actually smiled unreservedly at that, seeming to relax somehow. “For a moment, I thought you’d done something clever, but it was just simple observation and deduction. They teach you that in the first decade at Prydon.”

“I’m sure they teach you all kinds of things,” said Spandrell. “Now, will you tell me what you really did before you found Academician Jelpax’s body?”

She became very serious again, lowering her eyes as she looked somewhere deep inside herself. “You’re right, Castellan. Jelpax…while I was helping him with his research before I graduated, we became…we became very close. Very close friends. I…I used to visit him regularly, either in his rooms, or more often out here. We’d drink wine and talk. That’s all. That’s what we were doing at the Annexe before he died.”

 _Drink wine and talk_. Spandrell thought of the pair of gloves discarded beside the wine decanter in the study, about the bare hand Romanadvoratrelundar had tried to conceal in their earlier interview. _You bared yourselves to each other. Bared your flesh, your minds…_ He found his attention drawn back to the bed, imagining bodies entwined there, warm lamplight on skin…

“And how did Academician Jelpax seem the last time you met?” he asked, managing to force himself back into an investigator’s mind-set. “Did he seem worried?”

“Yes.” She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Yes, he did now that you mention it. He was talking to me but not really listening, and that wasn’t how he normally was. He was usually a very attentive host. His eyes kept wandering to the chronometer or to his comm-ring. I think he was expecting something to happen; a message, or maybe a visitor.”

“Did he mention anything he was working on? The archaeological expedition he had recently taken part in, for instance?”

She shook her head adamantly. “The last thing Jelpax ever wanted to talk about when he was socialising was his current work. We were there to forget our cares, not wallow in them.”

“And did you witness his death?” Spandrell asked, bluntly.

“N-no.” He heard the crack in her voice. “No. At…oh, just before five point nine, he suddenly said that he had some work that required his urgent attention, but that we should meet later. He more or less pushed me out of the door, but he was very clear; he was going to be out here tonight, and I should come and meet with him, that we would finish our conversation then.”

“Did you leave the Annexe?”

“Yes.”

“Then how did you come to find his body?”

She gave a rueful shrug. “I saw you looking at me before,” she said. “I didn’t do a very good job, did I, of hiding the fact I’d lost my glove?”

Spandrell allowed himself a thin smile. “No, you didn’t.”

“I’d…” She squirmed. “I’d taken it off, when we were…talking…and he rushed me out of the room so quickly that I was halfway to the transmat booths before I realised I didn’t have it. So I went back to get it. It had only been a few increments, after all. But when I…” She breathed deeply, falling silent for a few moments as the memory came back to her. He saw her eyes glistening in the lamplight. “Well, the rest is exactly as I told you before. I didn’t lie about any of that.”

Spandrell felt a strange sense of relief and disappointment combined. He had not wanted to think that she had played a role in the killing, even when he’d realised she was lying to him. “So, you have no idea who killed Jelpax or why?”

“No,” she admitted. “I wish I did. It wasn’t really the Shobogan everyone in the Capitol is saying did it, was it?”

“No,” he replied. “No, it was not.”

“So yes, I lied to you, Castellan,” she concluded, “but only because I was worried that my…my friendship with Jelpax would come to light, and be thought of as improper. I have a certain…that is, there’s a certain image and reputation one has to maintain. It was cowardly of me, I suppose.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I understand why you did it. You’re absolutely right about the Citadel, the Chapters. Do you know what a carrion-bush is, my Lady?”

She frowned. “No.”

“Well, the Citadel is overgrown with them.”

Romanadvoratrelundar suddenly rose from the table, her expression very grave. “As to why I came out here tonight, well, there was something about the way Jelpax spoke to me when I left him. I knew he was hiding something, but the way he insisted that I should come here, it was obviously very important to him. He was counting on me to do it. I think now that whatever he said about meeting me here, really he knew he didn’t have long left. I thought he wanted me to find something…and when I finally managed to get past your Guards and arrived here this evening, I did.”

Spandrell resisted the automatic impulse to remind her that they were, strictly speaking, not his Guards. Instead he watched as she crossed to the cupboard on the far wall and threw its doors open. Inside was a small collection of the same sorts of antique storage media and electronic devices as had been on display in Jelpax’s study, as well as a small desktop transmat unit.

_…the desktop transmat had been activated at some point shortly before being destroyed…_

Spandrell rose too, quickly moving over to see the device in more detail. It was the twin of the one that had stood on Jelpax’s desk, except intact. And lying upon its circular pad was a finely tailored leather glove, shimmering white in colour.

“I couldn’t find it anywhere,” Romanadvoratrelundar almost whispered. “He sent it to me here. And look!” She pointed to a slight bulge in the palm of the glove. “There’s something _inside_ it.”

Almost quivering with apprehension, she picked up the glove and poured its contents out into her palm. A long, plain silver chain spilled out first, then something like a twisted wreath fashioned from a tangle of bright, hair-thin metal filaments, a shining brilliance hanging suspended at its centre.

“He sent it back to me,” she murmured, looking down at the exquisitely crafted pendant in her hand. Her voice wavered: “ _Oh, Jelpax…_ ”

Spandrell could picture it now, the way it must have happened. Whatever it was Jelpax had learned in the Death Zone, he had known he was a marked man. He’d sent his pupil ( _his lover?_ ) out of harm’s way, and then destroyed his files and the dangerous knowledge with them, even hammering his computer to smithereens with the statuette to be doubly sure. And then his good colleague Hedin had arrived on his mission of death, perhaps on Intervention Agency orders, perhaps on his own account.

Why transmat the glove, though, with the pendant inside? He had got rid of the glove, perhaps, to conceal that the Time Lady had ever been in his rooms, to shield her from the same fate as himself. Spandrell could see the rationale behind that. And the pendant was a token of affection, sent purely out of sentiment. Or…?

“There’s something wrong with it,” Romanadvoratrelundar said, balancing the trinket in her hand. “It’s too light.” She breathed upon it and it drifted almost weightlessly off her palm, eventually coming to rest with feather-slowness at the end of its chain. She held it dangling before her face: “What _is_ that in the centre?”

And then Spandrell remembered the flagstone in the study.

_…cracked from side to side, as neatly as if struck by a mason’s chisel…_

Or by a tiny bead of dwarf star alloy, discarded carelessly, hitting with the force of several hammers…

“Let me see.” Spandrell leaned close, carefully examining the stasis field at the pendant’s centre. Something glittered there, something white and crystalline like an oversized grain of sugar. He delicately inserted a fingertip into the gap where the thing floated, pushing it out of the field so that it fell into his waiting hand. They both peered at it in fascination. Spandrell immediately recognised it for what it was, and from her expression the Time Lady did as well. A sparkling micromonolithic holo-crystal. An ancient form of recording media used in the Old Time, the age of Rassilon the First and Last.

“Jelpax replaced the dwarf star bead with the holo-crystal,” she surmised. “Then he transmatted it here before destroying his transmat so that whoever he knew was coming to kill him couldn’t trace where it had gone.” She looked up at Spandrell, suddenly animated, some strange mixture of anger and excitement written on her face: “This is it; the thing he was killed for, something he desperately wanted to safeguard and preserve.”

He nodded. “To entrust this to you…he must have known he could rely on you to do anything for him.”

She bowed her head, eyes glistening again, but her voice was like iron: “He could.”

“You should go now,” Spandrell told her, closing his hand upon the crystal and placing the hand inside his pocket.

She looked up at him, bristling with indignation: “Castellan, Jelpax sent that to _me_ … Give it to me at once!”

“He sent it to you because he must have felt he had no choice, but if he had…and if he…loved you, then I don’t think he would have, even though he knew he could rely on you more than anyone.” Spandrell looked down at the crystal. _Deadly little thing…_ “Whatever is recorded on that,” he said, “Jelpax was killed just for knowing it. Worse than that; _erased entirely_ in order to keep it secret.”

“Don’t say that,” she murmured, with something like dread in her voice. “Please don’t say that.”

“If you looked at this,” he continued, “if you learned whatever Jelpax knew, whoever killed him would not hesitate to kill you too, and not only to kill you but to sunder you forever from the Matrix. A fate _worse_ than death for a Time Lady.”

“I’ll find out,” she assured him. “One day I’ll find out who killed him, and then…then they’ll pay, whoever they are.”

“There will be a day of reckoning,” he agreed. “And until that day I will keep the crystal safe. It is evidence in an official murder investigation. Even somebody like Jelpax’s killer would think twice about coming after the Lord Castellan. I urge you; take the pendant, treasure it and whatever you and Jelpax enjoyed together, but go. Leave this place. Be careful on your way to the Citadel, but if you made it out here I think you’ll make it back. And for now, until I contact you again, forget you ever came here. Whatever Jelpax died for, believe me, until I can prove who killed him you’re better off not knowing about it.”

She looked down at the pendant, appearing to be about to argue with him. Then, however, she nodded slowly again before dropping it into the pocket of her dress. “Thank you, Castellan.”

“I’m merely doing my duty.”

“And believe me, Castellan, I will hold you to it.” She looked around the room, fondly and sadly at the same time. “I might forget this place, but I’ll never forget _him_ as long as I live. He was wonderful, you know. Wonderful and wise and dangerous, fizzing over with ideas and opinions and jokes, and just…silliness and seriousness, so old and so young at the same time. And so funny, but he could be so melancholy too, and sometimes so angry at injustice or small-mindedness whenever he encountered it…” She smiled, but it was a melancholy smile. “The best friend or the worst enemy you could ever hope to make. I’ll miss him so much.”

“You never know, you might find somebody else like that,” he suggested. “One day.”

“Do you really think so, Castellan?” She snorted with sceptical amusement as she made for the door. “Almost certainly not on _this_ planet!”

When he was sure that she was gone, Spandrell carefully searched the cupboard until he found what he was looking for and then he took both it and the micromonolithic crystal over to the table. He pushed his staser to one side to set down the bulky, antique holo-reader and brushed the dust from it until he found the tiny port into which the crystal slotted perfectly.

And then he hesitated, sitting with his finger poised over the “play” button, torn between the desire to _know_ , to understand, to solve the mystery, and the knowledge that the last person to know what the crystal could tell him had been annihilated for it, and had considered it so dangerous that he was willing to destroy his own work to avoid having it fall into the wrong hands.

_You’ve come this far, Spandrell. You may as well go all the way to the end…_

Steeling himself, he pressed the button. The holo-reader began to hum, a nimbus of ghostly pale light slowly coalescing in the air above it. Data began to stream through it, like one of Kelner’s extracts but in three dimensions, exponentially more complex. Spandrell concentrated, trying to see the patterns. 

Eventually, he did.

And immediately wished that he had never heard of Academician Jelpax.

* * *

The knock on the door made Spandrell jump halfway out of his seat, reaching instinctively for the staser. He managed to collect himself with considerable effort, setting the weapon down again as he rose to admit the new arrival. The knock repeated before he could get there, heavy and impatient, and again as he drew back the rusted iron bolt with a scream of tortured metal.

Borusa had opted to disguise himself in a weather-stained traveller’s cloak and slouch hat. He could easily have passed for an Outsider, or one of the Shobogan merchants who plied their trade along the long road from Arcadia to the Citadel and back.

“Did you make it here safely, my Lord?” Spandrell asked, hesitantly.

Borusa eyed him, unimpressed: “Evidently, Castellan. Now what is so important that I needed to come here in person to see it?”

“Y-you know, my Lord,” Spandrell stammered, running a hand through his thinning hair. “You must know.”

“I must?” Borusa asked, allowing himself to be guided inside and watching Spandrell close and lock the door again.

“You did come, after all,” said Spandrell. “Something I said when I called you…something I said must have convinced you.”

“Not so much what you said as how you said it.” Borusa looked Spandrell up and down: “I say, are you quite all right, Castellan?”

“No,” he answered, truthfully. “I don’t think I will ever be all right again. I warn you, neither will you if you watch it.”

“Watch what?”

“The thing that killed Jelpax. Hedin may have been the one who struck the blow, but it was…was… _that thing_ that killed him. He must have found it in the Death Zone, in the remains of some primeval library. As soon as he watched it, understood it, he was a dead man. One way or another.” Spandrell sank back onto one of the chairs, reaching compulsively for the “play” button again. “You can still leave, my Lord,” he told Borusa. “There’s still time.”

Even Borusa, perhaps the greatest Time Lord of his Looming, flinched for a moment, seeming to debate with himself as to whether he should watch or flee, such was the earnestness and insanity he must have heard in Spandrell’s voice. Eventually, predictably, he sat down at the table, eyes fixed on the holo-reader:

“Play it.”

“My Lord…”

“Play it, spack you!”

Spandrell pressed the button, starting the hum, the glow once more…the nimbus…

On a second viewing, although Spandrell could no longer be sure how many viewings there had been, the patterns were even easier to see, prompting vivid auditory and visual manifestations. He could not tear his eyes away:

 _War. War across the heavens, across all space and time… Worse than Rassilon’s war with the Great Vampires. A billion worlds razed, a billion more_ erased…

_Metal voices screaming hymns of hate, noble Time Lords falling and rising and falling again… The greatest of them all, the renegade, the Lonely God, sinking into bleakness and despair…_

“Omega’s wounds!” Borusa cursed, somewhere far away. “The _Black Scrolls_ …”

_The Iron Hand rising from its tomb in the Dark Tower… Hell follows with him…_

_Arcadia falling…and falling…and falling… Its golden spires tumbled in ruin, its people fled into the wastes…_

_No…_

_No…_

“No!” Spandrell screamed, jumping from his seat, fleeing the table. He found himself leaning on the far wall, back turned to the terrible data, breathing hard, sucking in air in a desperate urge not to vomit. 

When the hum finally faded and Borusa finally spoke, his voice was low and hoarse, the merest ghost of a whisper: “Is this…is this _real_?”

“My Lord,” said Spandrell, “I fear it is.”

“Gallifrey’s future...” The Chancellor-elect sounded shocked, as well he might. “And this comes from the Death Zone, you say?”

Spandrell still could not force himself to turn around. “I believe so. I…I think there may be more to find out there.”

“I think you are correct,” said Borusa. Spandrell heard the chair scrape across the floor as he rose from the table. “I think further expeditions are needed as soon as possible. I will look into the matter.” He sounded as if he were a billion miles away, voice faint and weak, his mind struggling to focus upon that to which it had just been exposed. “If this came out,” he said. “If this became public knowledge… Rioting Shobogans and Arcalian plots would be the least of our worries.”

“The people must know,” Spandrell murmured, to himself more than to Borusa. “How can we conceal it, something of this magnitude? How can we?” 

“Gallifrey is balancing on a knife’s edge as it is,” Borusa asserted, his voice growing louder, clearer. “I told you; we live in dangerous times. I told you, it would not take very much at all to spark off something…something terrible. I was not exaggerating. If the populace learned of this…” He paused. Spandrell could hear his rapid breathing. 

And then Borusa asked: “Have you told anybody else about this, Spandrell?”

“No, my Lord,” he replied, clinging to the wall like a life preserver. “I thought that in light of the sensitive nature of…” Words failed him. “I came straight to you.”

“Very wise,” said Borusa. Spandrell heard metal clunking against the wooden table top. He heard Borusa’s traveller’s boots faintly padding across the rustic rug, coming towards him. “Very wise.”

Spandrell turned and saw Borusa looking him over, with palpable regret. The Lord Cardinal held the staser Spandrell had left upon the table. As he aimed it at the Castellan, his hand was as steady as the Citadel itself:

“I’m sorry, Castellan.” 

Spandrell closed his eyes.

* * *

Commander Andred faced Castellan-elect Kelner across the large hexagonal table in the operations room conference chamber. Rodan, who might ordinarily have been invited to a meeting such as this, was nowhere to be seen. Her reassignment to space traffic control had come through early this timeband.

“And that is it,” said Kelner, turning off his comm-ring. “The last person to see Spandrell alive was the Guard leader at the Low Postern. He warned Spandrell against the dangers of venturing outside the Citadel, given the rioting in Low Town, but was brushed aside. The next report we have is that of the Shobogans who saw this…shed, shack, however you’d describe it, burning and ran to get help. The Surgeon General is saying that the cause of death was a staser bolt. The fire, presumably, was set merely to cover the killer’s tracks, to destroy any evidence that he might have left at the scene.”

Andred pounded a hand against the table, then saw Kelner’s disapproving stare. “I’m sorry, Castellan-elect, but… Spandrell, _dead_? It makes no sense. Who killed him? We need to launch an investigation immediately!”

“I don’t see that there is much to investigate, Commander.” Kelner affected a certain bland helplessness, as if it were nothing to do with him. “He told Lord Borusa when he left his office that he had a lead he needed to follow up on the Jelpax case, a loose end to resolve. No doubt this… _shack_ he was found in was some sort of hideout for the killer Gilbas or his confederates. Spandrell, venturing unwisely into Low Town without backup, ran into one or more of these criminals and the Shobogan scum shot him down in cold blood. It seems obvious to me that that is how it must have happened.”

“Still,” Andred protested, “we need to be sure that that really is what took place, rather than simply assuming. What about the Castellan’s data extract, his Matrix ghost?”

“ _I_ am the Castellan,” said Kelner, “and I’ve already checked them. They had nothing to tell us.” His icy expression seemed to defy Andred to try and claim differently. “It can be that way sometimes; likely it all took place so quickly that even Spandrell had no conscious knowledge of what happened to him. In some ways, that’s almost a relief. I wouldn’t like to think he had suffered.”

“No, sir.” Andred tried to tell himself that Kelner was probably right, but something still bothered him. He could not quite put it into conscious thought, but… “At least permit me to take a technical team down there, sir. Order has been restored for the most part, so it wouldn’t be prohibitively dangerous. Just to look at the scene, to see if there was anything…”

Kelner cut him off with a wave of his black-gloved hand and a cold rictus smile: “I know, Commander, I know. It’s hard to accept that somebody like Spandrell, a veteran servant of Gallifrey, of such…sagacity and brilliance, could die in such meaningless circumstances, but it happens all the time down there. At least be glad that you got that thug Gilbas before he killed again. His accomplices, the ones who killed Spandrell; we’ll get them too, in time.”

“Yes, sir, but…”

Kelner's smile only widened: “Forget it, Commander. It’s Low Town.”

 

_END_


End file.
